Ahoy, ye scallywags and ink-stained wretches! Gather 'round the flickering lantern, for there’s a foul wind blowing from the Potomac, and it smells of old parchment, wax seals, and absolute power. Word has reached my cabin via a very exhausted carrier-parrot that the Gilded Captain, Donald Trump, is plotting a course that would make even the most iron-fisted commodore of the East India Company blush. He seeks to snatch the charts of the vote right out of the hands of the local port authorities and lock them in a single, heavy chest in Washington D.C.—a process the land-lubbing scribes are calling 'nationalizing' the elections.

For centuries, every cove, inlet, and bay in The United States has managed its own tally. It’s been a messy, salt-crusted business, but one that kept any single tyrant from rigging the whole ocean at once. If one port’s harbormaster was a drunkard or a thief, at least the next port over might still be honest. But now, the plan is to standardize the rigging, ensuring that every mast, sail, and rudder follows the dictates of a central admiralty. They claim it’s for the sake of 'security' and 'order,' but we pirates know better than most: when there’s only one map in existence, there’s only one man who gets to decide where the 'X' marks the buried treasure.

"It’s a bloody mutiny against the old ways, I tell ye!" shouted Scupper-Leg Pete as he slammed a tankard of fermented grog onto the tavern table. "Next thing ye know, they’ll be telling us we can only fly the flag they send us in the mail, and we’ll have to ask for a federal permit just to spit over the railing!" Even the high lords are whispering in their velvet-lined chambers with a certain trembling in their boots. Lord Pompous of the Northern Shore was heard muttering to his footman, "If the federal quill writes every ballot, the states are nothing more than rowboats being towed behind a massive, orange man-o'-war."

Imagine the chaos on the high seas, ye dogs! If this decree passes, the sacred rituals of Election Day become a centralized parade where the winds are dictated by a single office. No longer can a rogue state steer its own course or challenge a foul count without the express permission of the High Admiral himself. It threatens the very spirit of The Constitution, that weathered, yellowed map we’ve all pretended to follow while we plundered the digital treasuries of the new world. If the anchors are all weighed at the same moment by the same hand, we’ll all be sailing straight into the eye of a storm with no way to tack against the breeze.

So, keep your eyes on the horizon and your cutlasses sharp, for the waters are turning murky. This move to nationalize the ballots is nothing short of a hostile boarding action on the ship of state. Whether ye be a merchant of the merchant-vessel GOP or a privateer of the Blue Fleet, remember this: once a captain owns the tide, he owns the sea itself. And a sea without a choice is just a very large, very wet grave. Fair winds, if ye can find 'em, but I fear we’re all about to be drafted into the Gilded Navy whether we like the cut of their jib or not!