Saturday 18th November 2000
Nuffin the Hamster reports on some misunderstanding
FLORIDA (Wednesday) - ‘Chad’s just got pregnant’ Rab
squeaked as he bounded into my nest compartment early in the morning ‘and they
reckon that Al Gore’s the father’
I rubbed the sleep from my eye and looked at him
intently ‘Wh...What are you talking about?’
There was no concealing his excitement and he ran
round the unit, again announcing ‘I’m telling you - Chad’s got herself pregnant
and they’re blaming one of the Presidential Candidates’
There had to be something not quite right here -
this seemed just too absurd a story for the man who’d invented the Internet,
sliced bread and had drawn the original blueprint for the pyramids. I allowed
myself to be groomed and emerged from the compartment behind Rab, squeaking me
to hurry up in case the news item ended - that was the one good thing with CNN.
They repeat everything so often that you know that, within a few minutes, it'll
all come round again. I sat down on my haunches and watched the lights flicker
in front of me as the newsreader began:
‘Reports have been coming in all day of numerous
pregnant Chads throughout Florida state...’
‘There you go!’ Rab shouted excitedly ‘He’s as bad
as Clinton!’
Something in the back of my mind told me that all
was not what it appeared to be as the newsreader continued:
‘...and these are expected to influence the final
tally of the electoral count’
Well, that certainly didn’t make it sound like people were
being referred to. Unless, by some quirk of fate, the local electors had
employed only women by the name of ‘Chad’ to count their votes. I wondered
whether, statistically, this was possible - after all, Chads must be few and far
between.
Rab was still bouncing around the room as I called
him over and urged him to sit down. The newsreader continued with her
explanation of the pregnancy, only for me to discover that they weren’t talking
human pregnancy here but ballot paper pregnancy.
What? Ballot paper pregnancy? Had two been left
together in a polling booth overnight?!
Then all became clear.
The chad they were referring to was the little
piece of circular, square or triangular paper in the middle of the ballot (and
which is held onto the card by four chads as well - just to avoid confusion)
which, on some, had bulged outward where the holing instrument hadn’t pushed
through the centre to release the four umbilical cords which held it on, so
creating a hole.
A pregnant chad, then, was simply a bulged chad -
something that the manual recounters were having to take into consideration as
they proceeded with their inspections prior to the final figure being arrived
at.
And the ‘pregnancies’ were being attributed to Al
Gore more than anyone - apparently, Democrat voters had never realised that a
hole had to made on the card rather than an indentation and the words ‘pierce
right through’ referred to the voting process and not a command to get
earrings.
I explained it all to Rab who sat, bemused,
watching more flickering lights ‘live’ from Palm Beach County. I could see the
misunderstanding beginning to be dispelled as perception fell over his face. He
looked at me at the end of my explanation and squeaked:
‘Rats! I really thought we had a scoop
there...’
Nuffin the Hamster writes
for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.
