SPOILERS!
Can anyone explain how to resolve the paradox caused in this season's episode "Decision 3012?"
How did Senator Chris Xaxar Travers winning the election cause him to cease to exist, thus allowing the crooked and reprehensible Head-in-Jar Nixon to win the election anyway. The premise of the show stated Travers came to the past with Earth's last suit to prevent Nixon from winning? He did that, but then he disappears, allowing Nixon to win... What happened?
Senator Travers...
used the machine language time code to summon a time sphere and travel back in time, thus making him a time paradox duplicate, which we know from Bender's Big Score causes him to be filled with doom radiation which will eventually destroy him, correcting any paradoxes. The specific form of his doom seems to be simple disappearance, whereas other characters simply met more violent doomy ends.
This therefore ensures there is no paradox by allowing the future events to proceed in the same way as before.
Senator Travers used the time code to go back in time to become president because Nixon sent the world into destruction. When Travers became president Nixon was never reelected, so the world was spared from Nixon. However, that meant that Travers would never go back in time to prevent Nixon from being reelected and becoming president himself. It was a paradox, and instead of making the world explode he just disappeared.
