we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which
the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was
himself the former head of that nation's secret police (CIA).
Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on
some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's pre-democracy past.
Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on
disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!
Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring
the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.
Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods,
turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.
Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls
by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.
Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead'
was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.
Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection
and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.
Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the
worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.
Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded
human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation.
None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the
self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page
thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere."
Add to the list:
The self-declared winner was actually first declared a winner by his cousin, a television executive
who induced every major network to "call" the election for his cousin, to create an impression that
any disputes of the election results would be an attempt to "reverse" a decision already made.
The official charged with deciding whether to have a recount is a close friend and political
representative (delegate to the election convention) of the self-declared winner.
Can this really happen in America?
If this were to happen in some other
country, many Americans would be in favor of sending envoys abroad
to correct the matter, after understanding, of course, that such corruption and
election stealing does not
take place in the United States.
Do
you think we are now welcome to go overseas to monitor how well democracy is
working during an election process?
Do you think that will stop us from
sending people and our policies anyway?
Democracy went wrong here. I invite you to ask questions about it. Let's work together.
~ joel