And yet, if Kerry wins, yon wee laddie will marvel at the sterling character of American democracy, that bright and shining star to the world's oppressed masses...
Posted on 10/27/2004 8:26:02 AM PDT by dead
DEMOCRACY Plaza is a quintessentially American event: an open-air museum laid on for two weeks in New York where people flock to see film stars and sporting heroes gushing patriotically about the great American vote.
And this from a country which next week is likely to lay on the most farcical display of democracy in the free world. There will be lawyers at the ballot booths, hanging chads and lawyers suing for victory as the rest of the planet howls with laughter.
It is likely to be just as bad, if not worse than last time - when George W Bush won by 537 votes in Florida and was saved after a Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a recount. This is the US Electoral College system, which is about to work its chaotic magic again.
The fiasco has started already. Both sides have 20,000 lawyers stationed with jets within an hour of any polling stations in swing states - watching for voter fraud, dirty tricks or any means they can dream up to deny their rivals a few thousand votes.
And there are dirty tricks aplenty. Four counties in Ohio - the main battleground state - have more registered voters than there are voting-age residents. So far, 120,000 duplicate names have been found on the state’s electoral roll.
Many of the single names are, to say the least, suspect. One is a murder victim, two are suspected terrorists and scores moved out of Ohio years ago. The race for voter registration, it seems, has been carried out with a little too much vigour.
But this is the result of desperation because, rarely, every vote counts. New Mexico was decided (for the Democrats) by 366 people last time - and the entire presidency was decided by that 537 margin in Florida (population: 12.9 million).
To put this into perspective, Malcolm Chisholm, Scotland’s hapless former health minister, was elected with a 5,010 majority last year in his corner of Edinburgh. The average MSP was returned by a majority far larger than that which took Mr Bush to the White House.
This is why American democracy seems so hilariously inept. A country of 300 million could have had its presidency decided by the number of people it takes to fill the Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow. This is the Electoral College in action.
Four years ago, America clearly decided. Al Gore, the Democrat candidate, had a majority of some half a million votes - but this was flattened by an Electoral College whose mechanisms are not fully understood by the voters themselves.
Next Tuesday, Americans will not be voting for a president directly, but for a class of "electors" who will vote for a president next month. Such people compose the Electoral College, and are asked (though not obliged) to cast their votes for whoever their state chooses.
Reeking of Westminster-style antiquity, it was written by the Founding Fathers so deep into the US constitution that 700 separate attempts have failed to get it out.
The first problem is that the winner takes all in almost all states. Sprawling California sends back 55 college members, all of whom voted Democrat last time. California’s five million Republican voters may as well have stayed at home.
Even if the Electoral College votes were shared out, it would still have been imprecise enough to deliver victory for Mr Bush last time, on a (narrow) minority of votes. The only fair method is to abolish the idea of state-voting, and have a straight election.
And America knows this. Successive opinion polls have called for the abolition of the Electoral College. But changing the US constitution needs approval of swing states, who do not want to lose the year-round attention they enjoy from whoever is in the White House.
This could have made for a good exhibit in Manhattan’s Democracy Plaza: a defect corner, showing flaws in democracy and the casualties it inflicts. Swing states and swing voters get attention: dependable voters in safe seats are hung out to dry.
The most powerful country in the world, the United States, can become a global laughing stock because it can’t decide which of two people to have for president. And this is a country intent on exporting democracy to the world.
But before Britain tut-tuts, we should look at the plank in our own eye. At least Americans have a direct say in who runs the country: in our general election, we’ll be asked to vote for a party, not a person, knowing that Tony Blair is about to quit.
Who will be next? Gordon Brown? Alan Milburn? The British public doesn’t know - and won’t be privy to the decision. The leadership is deemed a race too important for us to worry our pretty heads about: we are asked to return a local MP, and then go back to sleep.
EVEN new systems such as the Scottish Parliament have their flaws. The proportional representation hands power to the least-popular parties (the Liberal Democrats) and is set to deliver Lib-Lab coalition for a generation.
The swing-state prejudice can be seen here. Much of Scotland’s inner cities, for example, are left to rot because they can be relied upon to produce Labour votes time and time again. Estates in a marginal constituency would get more attention.
The English countryside gets such a raw deal from Westminster because it has always voted Tory and always will. Let them protest in Parliament Square over the foxhunting ban - the constituency system will prevent their anger from infecting Labour votes.
And the Tories could safely forget about Scotland in the Eighties. Our Westminster system delivers strong government - but hands disproportionate power to suburban Britain, because it is most capable of changing its mind.
The elections being held in Afghanistan are for show - just to send a message that the system works. The country, like Iraq, is many years away from the economic stability which is the condition for meaningful democracy.
So how to judge a democracy? Not stability. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, held regular elections. On choice of candidates? The rainbow selection in Italy leads all to regular chaos.
Every democracy has its vice - and America’s is the Electoral College system which has returned a president against the majority wishes of its national electorate only three times. But it’s still three times too many - and, next week, it may become four.
As things stand, Mr Bush seems to be winning the national vote, but faring less well in swing states. So this time, it may be his turn to win the majority of voters, but lose power. What’s fascinating about the American race is that, still, no-one knows.
In Europe, it’s fashionable to assume that Mr Bush will win again, because there is a grimly fatalistic ring to this election and incumbents tend to win a second term. But this view is not repeated by any serious American political analyst.
The better people know the Electoral College system and its ability to spread chaos, the more they laugh in the face of anyone who taps their nose and mutters wise predictions about the way the political wind is blowing.
So while we laugh from across the Atlantic at the unseemly vote-counting farce likely to erupt in Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin, we may also envy a system where the scales of power are genuinely capable of being tipped.
The US presidential election will be ugly, messy and - above all - thoroughly entertaining. But at least Americans have a plausible opposition and a real chance of changing their government. Many in Britain would give their eye-teeth for either.
And no one will be murdered at the polls. There won't be 100,000's of people rioting in the streets. There won't be 10,000's of troops called out with tanks to control the population.
Go ahead and laugh.
And Scotland has contributed to the world in what again? Oh yeah Ewan MacGregor, who likes to get naked and dance around in all his movies. I'll take that from Scotland, but the rest of them can Shut the hell up. Thank-you.
Actually an entertaining, if ignorant, analysis.
Europeans who proclaim they know America don't know jack.
How long has Scotland been England's bitch now?
Maybe we should read all the way to the last sentence?
And yet, if Kerry wins, yon wee laddie will marvel at the sterling character of American democracy, that bright and shining star to the world's oppressed masses...
500 years, or so.
Is this idiot for or against the electoral college? He makes no sense.
Hey! Shaddap and go back to your distillery.
That little sop of a last sentence (basically saying how lucky Americans are that they have even a chance to kick out a demonic moron like Bush) hardly redeems this comically ignorant attack.
yeah. get it you limey moron?
"The US presidential election will be ugly, messy and - above all - thoroughly entertaining. But at least Americans have a plausible opposition and a real chance of changing their government. Many in Britain would give their eye-teeth for either."
He actually seems to have a pretty fair grasp on the "why". Plus he seems to be offering an endorsement of our system.
I would say he wants to give Tony Blair the boot...but in favor of whom? The Tories? UKIP?
Don't be grumpy.
Bush will win in a landslide. ;)
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