World of Chig   

3.11.04
Mess

It's now 2.48am. Despite the temptation to continue watching the BBC's Presidential election 'results' programme (with no real results yet, just predictions), I've decided to go to bed now. There are people still queueing to vote in some parts of the States. They are all entitled to vote, even though voting should have stopped, because they turned up in time, before the polls were due to close.

Whatever the result of this election turns out to be, one thing is clear; the American election system is rotten from top to bottom. People don't know if their votes count, machines have broken down, judges have been sitting, ordering officials to use paper ballots, dead people have been registered to vote (and will probably have turned up today!) and not all the states allocate their electoral college votes in the same way. At the end of it all, there's no guarantee anyway that the candidate with the most votes across the country will win. It didn't happen in 2000, it may not happen tonight. (It doesn't always happen in the UK either - I'm not smug. We always have governments on 40% or less here, and in the 1970s, we even had a case where the government received fewer votes than the party which ended up forming the opposition.)

If this wasn't so serious, it would be hilarious, but, with the result feared to be so close, it's making a farce of any pretence at democracy. The lawyers, hovering like vultures in every state, will claw away even more of the fragile veneer of democracy covering this mess.)

Current electoral college votes as I retire: Bush 186, Kerry 112, Nader 0(!). It's totally meaningless though - it's just that the normally more Republican states have declared early. In reality only one electoral college vote has changed hands since last time, and that's gone from Democrat to Republican, worryingly. I wonder what we'll wake up to in a few hours? Goodnight.

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