Saint Petersburgate

*"is this scandal as egregious as 2faroe2islands? no. but am i determined to fight for the lives of flags that are mistakenly included twice? hell yes. ergo, i must formally protest this decision"*

*--Andrew Beaudoin*

Saint Petersburgate is a controversy from Flagpoll 2. The incident occurred when it was discovered that the flag of St. Petersburg Florida was included for a second time. Cam quickly replaced the flag with the intended flag of St. Petersburg Russia, but the decision was not without controversy and comparisons to 2 Faroe 2 Islands. Cam eventually pretended to resign from his post as leader of flags before being immediately reinstated by Greg, and the vote continued.

## Background

In anticipation of Flagpoll 2, Cam and Greg created a spreadsheet of 256 new flags to be included in the new tournament. One of these new flags was the flag of St. Petersburg Russia, and a new row was placed into the master spreadsheet with the name "st petersburg." However, this spreadsheet also included a row for the flag of St. Petersburg Florida with the name "st petersburg" and nothing differentiating the two flags by name. As such, when Cam was making the Flagpolls ahead of time, he accidentally used the Floridian flag in both spots. The binary variables in the Flagpoll spreadsheet do confirm that the first flag was intended to be Florida while the second was intended to be Russia.

## Incident

On July 22nd, the flag of St. Petersburg, Florida was included in Flagpoll XXII. The flag averaged a 5.4 despite a 1 from Yuki, and there were no comments about it, as most of the discussion was about the flag of Isle of Skye. On August 12th, Cam submitted Flagpoll XXXV, which mistakenly included the Floridian flag a second time instead of the Russian flag. Just two minutes after the poll was published, Sully commented that he believed the flag had been previously used. Andrew quickly jumped on the bandwagon, comparing the situation to 2 Faroe 2 Islands and jumping on the bandwagon to leave both flags in the tournament, a position he stood by in the previous controversy as well. Cam quickly stopped the poll and replaced the incorrect flag with the correct one, posting a picture of the Russian flag and telling any voter who had previously voted in the poll to DM him their new score. Four voters had voted twice on the Floridian flag, the most noteworthy of whom was Erik who gave it a 9 the first time and a 2 the second time.

Cam's attempts to move on from the incident were not met well by several voters, most notably Sahil and Andrew. Sahil called for a vote as to whether the group should leave the second Florida flag in the tournament, to which Andrew, Lexy, and Yuki all reacted with double exclamation points. Cam and Greg, meanwhile, refused to entertain the idea. Greg went as far as saying "faroe islands was one thing but i'm not going to go to bat for a flag as garish as the other st petersburg."

## Resignation

At 11:58 AM, Sahil made the first Richard Nixon comparison, an analogy Cam found absurd. A minute later came the first call for Cam's resignation, this from Andrew. Talks calmed down briefly, as the group discussed other similarly named flags such as Hamilton and Hamilton County, or New England and New England. But it wasn't long before the Nixon comparisons continued, with Sahil saying that Cam and Lexy would have to leave the pink house in a helicopter. Meanwhile, behind the scenes Cam and Greg were formulating a plan.

At 12:34 PM, Cam sent an @channel declaring that he was resigning from his role as the leader of FlagPoll and handing duties off to Greg. There was no immediate reaction as they had hoped, although Lexy privately texted Cam "wait are you actually flag resigning? Absolutely not". At 12:36, Greg fully pardoned Cam in his first act as flag czar. A minute later, he announced his second act, which was to resign and declare Cam as his successor, thus returning him to his original role. Cam quickly got down to business, and the channel went along with it.

## Aftermath

Cam quickly confirmed that all the votes were correct and sent out reminders to voters that had not yet voted. Conversation was derailed by Yuki announcing that he was a witness to the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. No mention of St. Petersburgate was made the rest of the day, although Greg named himself "greg, the saint-petersburg truther" in the poll. The next mention of the controversy came on August 26th, when Greg posited that the controversy was the reason for Andrew giving an 8/10 for the question "On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend Flagpoll 2 to a friend?"

## Gallery

Sahil requests a pollGreg makes a cheercisionA nice conversation