Saturday, October 23, 2004

Posted here Saturday, October 23, 2004 at 9:05:48 AM     With lots of young people assisting (?) at the polls but representing both sides in registration challenges and protecting voters ability to vote, the tendency or over vigorous action is accumulating. I am choosing words carefully. Why is the country split? With modern polling everyone knows what are the hot issues, and move stand on issues to attract from the other side. Since both sides are doing this, with the exception of the personality of the candidates (which can still be spun), and since both sides have heavy professionals managing the pr stuff, the tendency is to have each side move toward the other in a struggle down to the last voter (Florida and Ohio). The result is a tendency, short of mal-practice by the advisers, to divide the electorate equally. Any apparent shift in one direction or the other by voter preference forces the other campaign to adjust its story until the emerging plurality is gone. Hence we get the 50-50 split. Only dynamic issues, such as the American tendency to throw the bastards out, or under counting issues such as cell phone and younger voters, make for a decisive victory. If we add together the two thoughts -violence at the polls and a fifty fifty split, you can see the emergence of a nightmare scenario. My guess is there is no back channel discussion between the two candidates' staff on how to prevent this, nor of what to do if trouble emerges on election day or the day after. ********