I called Dan about the idea.
"Dan, how about running for mayor?"
"Who is this?"
"It's Eric."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
I explained to Dan my plan to get someone from the student population of Boston
elected as mayor. He listened intently, and then asked me why I didn't want to
do it. When I didn't have an answer, I became the leading candidate.
We spent the next few days doing research down at City Hall, figuring out what
we had to do to get on the ballot, how many signatures we needed and by when,
and also did some investigation into voting rights of students, which is
actually an extremely muddy area. Seems that students were given the right to
vote after the Vietnam war. If you could die for your country, the thinking
was, you should be allowed to vote for who gets to order you to die. The
problem came in that most 18 year olds who were gonna vote went away to
college, leaving them disenfranchised for all intents and purposes. We started
thinking of ways to solve this problem.