Mark Green is having a contest for people to speculate on the Bush Administration’s / Campaign’s (same thing, really) “October Surprise”. Here’s a long version of my entry :

With a week remaining until the election, the Bush campaign holds a press conference to reveal that they’re turning over to the FBI a memo supposedly misplaced by the Kerry campaign that details senate plans to rig the election in Florida by disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of black and elderly voters. The news of campaign impropriety drives reports of a “mysterious mushroom-shaped cloud spotted near Fallujah” off the front pages.

On election eve, Bush appears on the Dennis Miller show to deliver the quip “First my opponent wanted to play by the rules, but now he’s trying to cheat. If I weren’t here, John Kerry would be running against himself.” Miller agrees, saying that Kerry’s dwindling poll numbers are “like Oscar Wilde spending spring break playing Pop-o-Matic Trouble with Wilt Chamberlain and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man”. Bush laughs while secretly wondering to himself if Oscar Wilde is related to the guy from Sesame Street who lives in a trash can.

The next day, Bush is re-elected in a landslide. News anchors call the race for Bush before the polls are even closed on the west coast. Pundits openly speculate about what would have happened if the American people hadn’t “found out about what Kerry was trying to do”. During his acceptance speech, Bush credits the American people for taking back democracy from “those who wish to steal it”.

Epilogue : Six months later, a source at the FBI reveals that they never received any memos from the Bush campaign. Nobody notices.

If you’re interested in entering, you’d better hurry. They’re announcing finalists either tomorrow or the next day.