What Is Time Zone Fallout?
Time Zone Fallout is a social phenomenon which is likely to occur in countries with multiple time zones, if there are no laws to contain it. It can be understood this way: Imagine a country, Grekland (a fictional nation), which is divided into five time zones which result in a difference of 10 hours (say) between the cities located in the east and in the west. The nation embraces democracy and there are elections going on. The people who live in the cities in the Eastern part of the nation will vote 10 hours earlier. The country is technologically advanced and within a couple of hours the results are aired out across the nation. The results are bound to affect the voting in the western cities. This phenomenon is called Time Zone Fallout.
And it has happened on the Earth too! The most famous example comes from the United States. The year was 1980 and the presidential elections were going on. The eastern part of the country had already voted but the people in the west were yet to vote. Suddenly, the media declared a landslide victory for Ronald Reagan in the Eastern parts. A lot of people who were standing in the queues to vote for their president changed their mind and went back to their homes. The media reported people asking “Why bother to vote?”
