US farces
Summary Description Simon Vandore wants to put the 'e' in election.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore

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Editorial InformationArticle Location
Article Topic Vandore
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Story Group 001119
Post Date 17/11/2000 07:44 AM Status Posted Entered by Simon Vandore on 14/11/2000 10:43 AM


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Oh, the irony!

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The United States of America, which bombs and isolates those who don't meet its expectations of democracy, has failed to conduct a democratic election. The nation which sends monitors to scrutinise polls in other parts of the world can't even get it right at home.
And what will Iraq and North Korea make of the Bush family? Countries criticised by the US for handing power down a family line are watching the son of George Bush attempt accession to the White House, while his brother Jeb controls the state where the election irregularities occurred. Hundreds of thousands more Americans voted for Gore, but Bush appears more likely to gain the presidency.
At the very moment CNN declared 'BUSH WINS!' I was discussing the broadcaster's Web site with Newswire staff. We were reloading the page and actually saw the estimated tally of Electoral College votes tick over to a Bush win. It occurred to me that the declaration by CNN was a tad over-eager, and I decided to comment in this column that America appeared governed by television.
Bush began celebrating his win and Gore conceded defeat, all based on CNN's opinion. Considering some of the wildly inaccurate predictions on Australian TV during past elections, I thought 'I hope it doesn't happen here'. I even wondered if the tally stopped once CNN gave its verdict.
And then a small voice piped up, 'we are supposed to do a recount when it's this close'. CNN, NBC and ABC blushed. Even Bush and Gore had forgotten the rules, and judging by the amount of legal action initiated, didn't want to follow them.
Then it emerged that Florida's version of democracy involves punch-card ballot papers tallied by sorting machines. If a voter had not punched the hole cleanly or the punched-out fragment of paper had remained hanging by a thread, the counting machines recorded an 'undervote'. There were tens of thousands of undervotes in Florida, leading to a recount by hand.
In the country that leads the world in computers and the Internet, the use of punch cards and the potential to undervote must be a national joke! Coming a close second is Oregon, where they vote by snail mail and it takes a couple of weeks for everything to arrive.
Whatever happened to the concept of electronic democracy? Is the nation that champions ecommerce, online discussion and Internet media, really reduced to using dramatically unreliable punch cards and postboxes for its elections? Internet democracy can and will be developed, it's only a matter of time -- even if people still have to go down to a polling booth and use an official electoral terminal.
A secure, efficient, online election could reflect national opinion faster and more accurately than any current method. The media would not have to rely on estimates. Of course, America will also have to overcome its Electoral College system so that it can say to Saddam Hussein, "this man is our President because most of us wanted him to be", and tell Kim Jong Il that George Bush's son is President in his own right; Jeb Bush did not rig the poll.
For the moment, this seems a long way off. But guess who is championing online democracy? Guess which place in the world has just announced it will trial Internet voting in its next election? It's not in high-tech Scandinavia. It's not even in Japan, South Korea or Taiwan. It's the Australian Capital Territory.
Congratulations ACT on your vision. For the sake of hundreds of millions of Americans, and the rest of us, I hope it works.
Vandore appears every Friday on Newswire. You can contact Simon Vandore onsvandore@acptech.net.


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Simon Vandore wants to put the 'e' in election.

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Vandore: US farces

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