"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.

All of them?

Two of them were in a hearse and are hiding in that instead.

...okay. They sit down next to a building and sing quietly and wait to see if any reds get less nervous.

Not for a long time.

They've Elves. And also don't have any work to do here if this doesn't get resolved. After a really long time one of them will arrange someone to teleport in and drop them food. They eat the food and keep waiting.

After four hours the hearse ones get out and make a break for it, heading for the nearest apartment building.

"We're scaring them."

     "Yeah."

"If they wanted to talk they could have written into the channel."

    "Not if they thought something bad would happen to them."

"If they thought something bad would happen if they wrote something we could read they're not going to just talk to us."

    "Maybe not today or this week but - I don't want to just write this country off as a stupid backwater that hates reds more than they want kids until -"

"Yeah, sure, we can stay. They'll probably get less scared over time. I'll ask about regular food deliveries." She does that.

After six hours some cops come in to the neighborhood.

"Hello."

"Hey. What are you doing here?"

"Observing. Someone suggested we explain to a court that there should be an exception to the rules that would let them vote and you need firsthand information to make an argument like that."

Cops confer briefly amongst themselves, then the same one says, "You need to clear out, they're not showing up to work."

"...we could do invisible? So we don't interfere with that but don't have to give up on getting this country a colony planet entirely."

"You can come back after we've told them to show up to their jobs, we want you out of here altogether for now."

"Why? People interacting with them is exactly the kind of thing we'll need to take to the court."

"You're the ones who scared 'em. Shoo."