[ExI] what if we get tarkined? was:RE: ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do??

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
spike at rainier66.com
...

>...So imagine... in 2018, the day before the election... a video is
released of one of the candidates saying something that is the most damaging
thing imaginable, way worse than commenting about grabbing pussy and such,
way worse than that.  Write your own script if you wish, but imagine... Put
this post somewhere where you can find it in 2.5 yrs...spike

_______________________________________________

Further thoughts: this whole scenario should not be dismissed lightly, for
it almost happened in 2000.  It was not really intentional I don't think.
It worked this way: most of the states' results were in or were predictable,
but Florida was very close.  Al Gore was ahead when the polls closed by a
big enough margin that the news agencies called the state and the election
for Gore.  But wait... western Florida is in a different time zone, and that
piece of Florida is as red as anywhere in the country outside Kansas.  Their
polls were still open for an extra hour because of the time zone, and their
results caused Bush to catch up and pull slightly ahead in Florida and win
the whole election.

We remember it, but... the critical point here is that when the news
agencies started calling the election for Gore while the polls in western
Florida were still open, a lot of voters who had not yet voted or were
waiting in line in western Florida went home without voting: no point.

What if... Gore had won that?  What if that couple hundred extra voters who
stayed around and voted in the last hour had not done so?  Then we would
have a case where faulty news reporting overturned an election.  The
resulting culture war would have been nearly unimaginable.

We are facing that risk again.

spike