"Do you want us to carefully place ballots in crematoriums, too?"

"Sure! And in zoos and accessible to any computers you have which might be intelligent. Anything capable of filling out a ballot will be counted, and the other ones can be made out of something biodegradeable so they don't cause clutter."

"...I'm not sure if you understand the point of voting or if you just heard of the idea somewhere and thought it sounded fun."

"The point of this approach to voting is that it bypasses questions of who deserves a voice and says that every voice we can hear will be considered and that we'll try really hard to be listening everywhere."

"Why do you throw out duplicates, then?"

"It's, like, 'we'll hear every voice we can' doesn't imply 'and if you shout you get more weight'."

"Suppose we were hive minds or something, that makes more sense than letting reds vote."

"There is a procedure for hive minds."

"- well, now I'm curious."

"It was negotiated with an Edda species, it kicks in only if individual subentities don't parse as a person to a subtle artist but the entity as a whole displays communicative intelligence."

"...right. Anyway, we can't have reds voting. The zoos thing we can maybe do."

" - it's easier to argue for distributing ballots in zoos in case your monkeys are intelligent than distributing them to reds, who are intelligent?"

"Monkeys aren't unclean. Untidy maybe but not polluted."

"I see."

"I don't think we'll be able to work with you if you want reds to vote. This isn't, you understand, anything to do with how we think they'd vote - there aren't enough of them to sway much - it's just the principle."

"It seems to be a very strongly held principle." Sigh. 

"You have special cases for a lot of things, I'm frankly appalled this isn't one."

"It would, historically speaking, usually have been a mistake to carve out exceptions for beings capable of casting a ballot who people felt should not be permitted to do so."

"All the other cases you mentioned were ridiculous and I vaguely wonder if they were made up."

"I'd be delighted to take you around so you could talk to locals about them."

"Maybe when I have a vacation coming up."

"All right. Thanks for your time."

"Let us know if you change your mind about letting the garbage vote."

Sigh.

They discuss it later. "It's - possible that this isn't actually what the reds would prefer? Like, we don't want to be in the position of taking a stance for their sake that hurts them - we could ask them, if they overwhelmingly prefer membership without voting rights or something that I can imagine a court carving out an exception for -"

"...I guess..."

          " - you're allowed to visit them, right, if you wear the plastic covers and do the shower afterwards -"

"Yeah, you are."

         "So we could go ask."

Elves venture into a Rivikni red district.

Reds are scared and go into their homes.