Good idea to post Hugo nominees! Great way to spread the word about these stories.
But, this one did absolutely nothing for me. Almost anything in Escape Pod's backlog topped this by an order of magnitude. Two unlikeable people arguing politics... If either of them had had a cause that was worth rooting for, or if the laws seemed even remotely relevant to anything then I might give a darn.
She claimed that she is starting this argument to keep him from pushing back the census data for a few years to avoid pushing it back into perpuity and losing history. But why would anyone even want to push it back to perpetuity? And that is a far cry from "losing history" in any case. Later she admits that part of her motivation was to impede his progress, and that's a goal that I just don't care about (and seems to be her only goal that actually makes sense).
He, on the other hand, is a typical politician trying to cover his past. Only in this case he's not trying to cover something he's DONE but something he's been since birth. Maybe it's just my personal religious views, but I don't really get what's the big deal about a clone vs. a natural birth. If he succeeds, then a person I don't care about might become president over some other person I don't care about. If he fails, then he could still be elected, even though the other person I don't care about might be more likely. Either way, neither outcome is compellingly better than the other to me.
And in the end he just concedes to her and it's over.
I guess I just don't get the appeal. And cases like this make it very clear to me that my personal tastes have nothing to do with what makes stories win awards.