Banners, flyers, stickers and badges that rattled obnoxiously in their box, all bearing gleaming ingenuine smiles. Their patriotism worn like a soldier's posture, breast up and forward, wide and strong. The scale of integrity dipped heavily to one side, greatly diminishing the few who knew what the word meant. All bearing heavily, the burden to tick the right box, which glimmering smile to stand behind. Bombarded by political scalpers, desperate to sway opinions on their final steps towards the booths, tripped up on shouted words marks a vote for the opposition.
I really don't enjoy words that feel American, candidate being one of them. Of course, the word is used in Australia but I don't feel that it focused on. It's likely all those US TV political TV shows and how often they use the word candidate. I wanted to find a different angle but couldn't make it work.
My original idea was to use the idea of candidate as being “the right candidate for the position" when job hunting. It was going to focus on the difficulty of being your own promoter and sell yourself for the role. I obviously didn't go that way, but that's how the cookie crumbles.