Election Day

 is an unmarked quest in Fallout 3.

Background
Dave is running for President of The Republic of Dave once more and he needs your help. He asks you to talk to the other four adults of his land (Jessica, Shawna, Rosie, and Bob) to get them to vote. Once you have talked to them, go back to Dave and receive your reward.

There are a total of 5 votes, including Dave's. It is possible to persuade Rosie and Bob to run against Dave in the election. Doing so would net them each one vote (if they haven't voted yet). Under normal circumstances they would only receive one vote, presumably their own. The only way to get Rosie or Bob to win is to steal the other ballots for Dave out of the box before he counts them all.

Objectives and walkthrough
After you have told Dave all the votes are in, he will go to the ballot box. If you are quick enough open the ballot box right after Dave unlocks it, steal all the votes, but leave one vote for the candidate of your choosing. Dave will count the votes and declare whomever you left a vote for as the winner. If you speak to the victor he or she will give you the code to the safe. It contains a unique Rifle named Ol' Painless, which has a faster reload time and does more damage. The rifle can be repaired with regular hunting rifles.

Dave will get angry and say something about leaving then storm out of the Republic. If you catch Dave as he leaves the camp he will tell you that he is going to Old Olney to liberate it from the wasteland and create a new Republic. Due to the deathclaw infestation in Old Olney, you can usually find Dave dead on the streets somewhere. You can opt to 'escort' (i.e., follow) him to Old Olney and kill any robots, bloatflies and deathclaw you encounter. He will finally park himself in an alleyway and say something like "This is the New Republic of Dave. Go away." After being talked to three times, he will attack you. However, if Dave attacks you and you subsequently kill him, the residents of The Republic of Dave become hostile and attack you when you return.

Alternatively the player may decide to use this quest as a method to more sneakily complete the You Gotta Shoot 'Em in the Head quest and avoid the residents being turned hostile (assuming you don't have any interest in talking Dave into giving up his key). To use this method, make Dave lose the election and when he leaves follow him a short distance away from The Republic of Dave (so the residents don't witness the murder) you can then "shoot 'em in the head", as the quest says, without killing or being shot at by the Republic of Dave residents.

Bugs
Several people report that this quest is easily broken.


 * The voters don't vote after being told to do so, they just stand in front of the ballot box, doing nothing; a work around after reverting to a previous save, is to ensure you give a full minute in between telling each to vote. The bug is pathing conflicts with no specific NPC having path priority. This can also be avoided by telling them to vote one at a time, following one and waiting for him/her to vote and go back to what he/she was doing before asking the next to vote. You can reset the NPCs one at a time by entering the console, selecting each NPC, entering DISABLE, and then ENABLE. This will reset their pathing and they should proceed to vote.
 * NPCs can die, which breaks the quest.
 * If Dave does not win the election, the victor would reward you with the code to the safe. Even so you will get Karma penalty for taking items from the safe (including Ol' Painless). Items are considered stolen.
 * If you convince Bob and Rosie to run for president and rig it so that they tie, Dave stays as president. He should say "There was a tie. Under these unique circumstances, I'll have to remain the leader until we know the results for sure" which is one of the dialogs in the game files, but in-game he would often say either Bob or Rosie won, and not leave the republic.
 * Interrupting Dave's counting and reading of the votes (with violence, for example, or theft) can break the quest.
 * The voting might go on without the quest being activated. The few things you can do when this happens is to load a save file, pickpocket Dave, or kill him.
 * Under unknown circumstances, Dave will treat the filing cabinets to his right as the ballot box.
 * If you do not convince Bob or Rosie to run for the presidency, and steal all of the ballot papers marked with a vote for Dave, he will declare Rosie the winner nontheless, say he will leave, but then return to his office as normal, this will also happen if you convince Bob to run for president and take every vote out of the ballot box.

День выборов