In a startling announcement last week, town officials revealed the discovery of a clandestine, far-flung network aimed at undermining public confidence in Harvard town government. Executive assistant to the assistant town investigative executive Cherylee Wambat said the Kremlin is almost certainly responsible for the fact that running for public office in town is about as popular as having a tooth extracted. Based on information contained in a pile of water-soaked top-secret documents found under the paper compactor at the Transfer Station, officials have been able to piece together a diabolical plot, linked to the Kremlin, to obliterate any semblance of public support for contested elections in semi-rural America. As it was executed in Harvard, the plot included expert doctoring of cable TV images and audio to make Select Board meetings seem even more tedious and incomprehensible than they actually are. The idea, Wambat said, was to create the false impression that the board’s work is so impossibly onerous and complicated that only the town administrator can understand it.
Investigators concluded that the operatives had been practicing for the upcoming American presidential election, where their goal was to persuade voters to replicate the Russian model—one candidate and a nearly unanimous vote. “And it almost worked perfectly here,” said Wambat, pointing to the distressing string of unopposed candidates in this year’s Town Election.
