Your Stepdad's Referendum Failed, Now He's Crying in the Garage, AITA?
Look, I get it. You wanted to feel like you had a seat at the table. You wanted to be the big man, the one who "listened to the people" before he "brought the hammer down." So you, my dear Stepdad, decided to hold a referendum. A binding, democratic, totally-not-a-power-trip vote on whether or not I, your 28-year-old, fully-employed, rent-paying stepson, could park my 2012 Honda Civic in the driveway while I’m visiting for Thanksgiving. You printed ballots. You had a ballot box (an old shoebox with a slit in the top). You had an official “observer” (your buddy Dave from the VFW, who was already three Bud Lights deep by 10 AM). And then you lost. Spectacularly.
Now you’re in the garage, hunched over a can of Coors Banquet, blasting Creed through a Bluetooth speaker that only works if you hold the cable at a 45-degree angle. You’re not just sad. You are the human embodiment of the “Game Over” screen from the original Super Mario Bros. You are a cautionary tale.
Let’s rewind, for the uninitiated. The “Great Driveway Referendum of 2024” was the brainchild of your stepfather, a man I will call “Kevin” to protect his identity, though frankly, the only thing he’s protecting is his fragile ego. The issue: I was coming home for the holiday. I drive a 2012 Civic. It’s not a show car. It has a dent in the passenger door from when I had to dodge a squirrel in a parking lot. It has a bumper sticker that says “My Other Car is a Broom” from a Halloween I refuse to explain. Kevin, however, bought a new F-250 Super Duty last year. A truck so massive it requires its own zip code. A truck he uses exclusively to drive to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. He felt the Civic, my lowly, reliable, paid-off Civic, “ruined the aesthetic” of the driveway.
The solution, according to Kevin, was not to ask nicely. The solution was not to say, “Hey, could you park on the street this year?” No. The solution was a democratic process. He wanted it on the record. He wanted legitimacy. He wanted to be able to say, “It wasn’t me, it was the will of the people.”
So, the ballots were distributed. The voting demographic: Kevin (1 vote), my Mom (1 vote), Kevin’s 12-year-old son from a previous marriage, let’s call him “Brayden” (1 vote), and me (1 vote). That’s four votes. A perfect square. A recipe for chaos.
The ballot was a single, loaded question: “Should [Redacted's] vehicle be permitted to occupy the primary driveway space during the Thanksgiving visitation period? (Yes/No)”
I voted “Yes.” Obviously.
My Mom voted “Yes.” Because she loves me and also because she hates looking at the F-250, which she once described as “a monument to midlife crisis.”
Brayden, the 12-year-old, voted “No.” Not because he has strong opinions about driveway hierarchy, but because Kevin had promised him $20 and the new Call of Duty if he voted the right way. Classic voter suppression, using micro-transactions and bribery. It’s a tale as old as time.
That’s two “Yes” votes and one “No” vote. The stage is set for a tie.
Kevin looked at the results. He stared at the tally sheet like it was written in ancient Sumerian. “This can’t be right,” he muttered. “There must be a recount.”
“Kevin,” my Mom said, “it’s two to one. You lost.”
“No,” he said, a vein throbbing in his forehead. “There are four voters. I haven’t voted yet.”
Ah. The dictator’s final gambit. He hadn’t cast his ballot. He was the arbiter, the moderator, the Secretary of State of the Kevin driveway election. He was supposed to be neutral. Instead, he was the deciding vote.
He took the pen. He marked the “No” box. He held it up to the light. He put it in the box.
2 to 2.
Deadlock.
Now, a sane person would call it a wash. A tie means the status quo remains. The Civic goes in the driveway. The F-250 can, I don’t know, park in the neighbor’s yard. But Kevin is not a sane person. Kevin is a man who spent last weekend building a birdhouse that looked like a miniature replica of the Alamo. Kevin is a man who has a “World’s Okayest Dad” mug that he drinks his morning coffee from with an unsettling intensity.
“The constitution,” Kevin declared, “does not account for ties. We need a runoff.”
“Kevin,” my Mom said, “we don’t have a constitution. You wrote this on a napkin from Arby’s.”
“It’s still a binding document!” he yelled, shaking the napkin.
The runoff was held. It was the same vote. 2 to 2 again.
At this point, Kevin’s soul visibly left his body. He was a ghost in cargo shorts. He retreated to the garage. He is currently there now. I can hear him trying to fix the cord for the weed whacker, which he broke in a fit of rage earlier.
And now, the internet asks: Am I The Asshole? For refusing to “respect the process”? For pointing out that his referendum was a sham from the start? For laughing at him? Yes, I laughed. I laughed when he printed the ballots. I laughed when he announced the results. I laughed when he retreated to the garage. I am laughing now, as I type this, sitting in my Civic, which is parked exactly where I wanted it, in the middle of the driveway, like a
Final Thoughts
As a reporter who’s watched too many campaigns where nuance gets crushed by a simple “yes or no,” I’ve come to see referendums as the bluntest tool in democracy’s kit—capable of cutting through legislative gridlock, but just as likely to sever the threads of compromise. The article rightly underscores that while these votes can empower people on pivotal issues, they often reduce complex policy to a binary choice, leaving the most vulnerable constituencies to suffer from the fallout of a single, emotional night at the polls. Ultimately, a referendum should be a last resort, not a first impulse; governance by plebiscite risks turning every deliberation into a winner-take-all battle, when what we really need are systems that force us to listen, not just to win.