The election in Iraq is over. Despite the warnings from several sources, the Bush administration will be touting it as a phenomenal success. Following hot on the heels of the dramatic election turnaround in Ukraine, the neocons, from the White House to the mass media, will be talking incessantly about the tremendous power of free, fair and honest elections.It's too bad we don't have them here in the U. S. of A., the very seat of modern democracy.
Oh, sure, we have the form of free and fair elections. We just don't have the result. Four years ago, a concerted effort on the part of the Bush family to keep tens of thousands of Florida's minority voters from the polls succeeded in putting an undeserving person in the Oval Office. Last November, bolstered by their success in cheating their way to power, the Friends of Karl Rove, backed by a purchased press, managed to pull the wool over the eyes of almost all of America.
When we send observers overseas to monitor other countries' elections, we do it by comparing the results of exit polls to the official tally. If they differ widely, we declare the election to be fraudulent. This is what happened in Ukraine.
By this standard, last November's official result was, to say the least, surprising, because all the exit polls said John Kerry would win Ohio, Florida, and the election. Following this surprise, almost all the articles in the newspapers and on television tried to point out the "flaws" in the exit poll system. They claimed that pollsters didn't ask the right people.
The problem is that the official numbers varied widely from the poll results only in a few key states, and only in one direction - in favor of George W. Bush. If the exit polls were so faulty, this disparity would have shown up all around the country, and in both directions. It didn't. It only showed up in those key states, and key counties, where the voting machines had no paper trail, and where the shift helped those people the makers of the machines wanted to help.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
In any other civilized democracy, say Ukraine, the machines would have been impounded, and the hardware and software thoroughly tested. Crowds would have taken to the streets. The media would have demanded proof that the election result was legitimate, and would have reported every instance where fraud appeared to exist.
Apparently, in America we have half a democracy. We have the pretense of going to the polls and voting. We have the illusion that the votes are counted properly. We have all the forms, but we don't have the correct result. The result, so far, is eight years of a fraudulent administration, pushing programs America didn't vote for. The question is, how many more elections will be stolen?
Or have Americans decided that half a democracy is better than none?
Copyright 2005, Dan Jacoby
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