Small P and Large P Politics and the F Word

As elections go Monday night was rather exciting not because of some very tight races, but because of the growing hysteria fueled by the on-air media coverage about the tabulation. “Glitches” with the tabulation machinery, “missing” data chips/cards (actually in transit to the central returning office), no one at Elections New Brunswick returning calls, and having to wing-it when you run out of relevant things to say, increased to an on-air panic rife with throw-back comments (“we won’t say this, but oh we are saying it”) about the 2000 U.S. election and Florida. This all peaked between midnight and one in the morning when an on-air personality grilling the head of Elections New Brunswick suggested this was all because some local returning officers had gone home for the night with the data chips and was also part of a conspiracy foisted on New Brunswick by a Toronto computer company that were suspiciously not answering their phones. It seemed lost on this personality that maybe...