The cube does, however, serve a bureaucratic purpose:
Although the disposal process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Indiana Election Division engineers believe that the Styrofoam cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Cube.
Well, that’s a relief. No telling what conspiracy theories might have ensued without an explanation for The Cube.
Do not throw away the cubes! You need to bring them to the polling place in order to vote. Each voter will have the opportunity to place their cube in a box labeled for each candidate. The candidate with the most cubes in their box will win. Among the expanded polystyrene beads are taggants which can be clearly used to identify fraud. Styrofoam cube fraud is the greatest threat to democracy we face today.
Because of a manufacturing error, the styrene foam in one in ten of the cubes was expanded with a variant of dimethyl ether which is highly addictive. Such cubes can be identified by their odour and colour; standard polystyrene is white and odourless; polystyrene expanded with the variant ether has a sweet odour and a slight yellowish tint. The variant ether has an LD[sub]50[/sub] of 0.14 ug. Symptoms of moderate exposure include hunger, thirst, a slight vibration in the limbs, and fatigue. A minority may experience vivid hallucinations. Excessive exposure induces unconsciousness, then death.
In November 2012 we’re going to be hearing a lot out hanging cubes and dimpled cubes.
When I voted by absentee ballot in the 1996 election, my US address was in Indiana, so the Election Division sent me a packet. This packet contained no styrofoam cube, but it did contain a small piece of thick wire bent somewhat like a paperclip. This device was solemnly called a “punch wire” and it contained very useful instructions like “only use on enclosed election punch sheet” and not, one supposes, in one’s eye. I wonder how much money went into those punch wires.