My friends tell me that the funnest part of the entire night was watching Dan Rather's face go from jubilation at about 4 PM to downright dejection at midnight. I don't know, I was watching Fox.
I did find an interesting analysis on a website named ORBAT.com edited by an Indian (from India, not a Native American) by the name of Ravi Rikhye living in Washington D.C. I will post it here for your perusal.
I hope you find it interesting.
One aspect is good for our non-US friends to examine. Many non-Americans and many Americans – get upset because the US is not a direct democracy. Let the majority prevail, what could be fairer than that?
· The thing is, those Founding Fathers had an uncanny understanding of the future. Majority rule is also tyrannical rule. The Fathers were careful to balance the needs of the majority with the needs of the minority. That is why the US has remained united, with the exception of the Civil War. If you will look at the red-blue electoral maps, you will be amazed at how wide the red (Republican) area is. To let New York and California decide how the rest of the country must live because these states together have a population much greater than most of the red states aggregated, would mean disaster. Look at what has happened in so much of the world because it follows the majority rule and the minorities won’t accept that. Think about it – and certainly those Americans who want to change to majority rule need to think about it. Its going to get terribly lonely for the US North East, New York, Florida, California and a few other states if they rule by majority and the minority doesn’t accept it.
Readers will know the US Electoral College vote hangs on Ohio with its 20 votes. Mr. Bush has, of course, won the popular vote by a clear margin, but it is the electoral vote that counts. The popular vote is nonetheless reflected in the gains made by the already dominant Republicans in the Senate and the House, because these seats, as is the case for other elected offices, is decided by majority vote
· Provisional ballots were introduced in 2002 to avoid a 2000 repeat. If a voter’s name is not on the rolls for her precinct where she is registered, she can file a provisional vote. After verification she is indeed registered but due to a glitch her name was not on the precinct roll, her vote is counted. Else it is rejected. This process, understandably, takes time.
· The editor’s youngest had to cast a provisional ballot in his first ever opportunity to vote after coming of age. Fortunately, he had proper identification plus a letter from the authorities saying they had been informed by a government agency that he had registered.
· Provisional ballots need not be counted. Presuming that your editor’s boy cast his vote for an independent candidate, as he is registered as an Independent, his vote for his candidate will not be counted. No independent had any chance of winning anyway.
· We explain this for the benefit of our overseas readers who might wonder what the fuss about the provisional ballots in Ohio. In theory, the provisional ballots, if all have been cast for Mr. Kerry, could give him Ohio. Now, this is unlikely to happen because many provisional ballots will have been cast for Mr. Bush, and many others will be ruled as improperly cast. But it could theoretically happen, which is why Mr. Kerry is pushing the issue.
· There is another problem. In some of the precincts that voted for Mr. Kerry, the old punch card system is still used. So a recount could show that some ballots counted by hand that were rejected or counted as not for Mr. Kerry could be given to him. The process of verifying each ballot by hand can take several days. But the process can cut both ways: Mr. Bush would also gain votes, as every contested card cannot be for Mr. Kerry.
· Legal challenges could extend the uncertainty. The Democrats would be taking a big risk, however. If they still lose Ohio, they will be in trouble with Mrs. Jane Q Public, because the process is by its nature contentious and mean-spirited, and Americans are fed up after Florida 2000.
· That vote fiasco made America a bit of a laughing stock worldwide. The truth of the matter is, however, that given the size of the vote – second largest in the world – it is astonishing the extent to which the Americans go to ensure that every vote is counted properly.
· Usually imperfections in the vote process do not affect the outcome because the vote is clearly in one candidate’s favor and no amount of recounts is going to change that. These flaws are normal worldwide. And there is no moral law that permits a voter to say: “I’m stupid or uneducated, I thought I was voting for Mr. Kerry even though my card shows I voted for Mr. Bush”. The punch card system is actually quite accurate, and democracy presupposes a duty on the voter’s part to educate herself on the machine’s use. There is plenty of help available at each station in case anyone is confused.
· In general, our non-American readers should note that Mr. Bush has won the popular vote because “moral values” do matter to the majority of Americans. Had a less controversial person stood in place of Mr. Bush, using the same simple “moral values” appeal, he would have won hands down. Foreigners think America is the west and east coasts. Your editor has to explain to Americans in the Washington area that this is not so. The majority of Americans are pious and social conservatives. They have had it with the “morals values are relative” approach of secular people, and they voted for Mr. Bush.
· Fareed Zakaria, the Newsweek editor who is South Asian, is absolutely right when on ABC-TV he noted that when it comes to religion, Americans are right there with Saudi Arabia. This scares the daylights out of the Europeans, who tend to be secular. Mr. Bush really, really frightens Europeans and the elites of the 3rd world when he uses a moral values framework through which to view the world. But lets not blame Mr. Bush: he merely espouses the values of most Americans.
· As for should we worry about what America values, keep this in mind. America is a huge conglomeration of peoples from every part of the globe. So is it that most of the world actually believes in moral values or is it that moral values people tend to migrate to America?
· And if one wants to be really frightened, what if the majority of America is right, that really truly, God, patriotism, modesty, chastity, fidelity, etc etc is what matters? What if secularists (your editor is a secular pantheist) are simply wrong in saying: I have my moral values, you have yours, and lets leave it at that, because this process becomes a race for the bottom, to the point there are no values? Can civilization still continue?
· Your editor has no answers. Nonetheless, the world has to get used to the idea that America is a religious country. And the fight against the “terrorists” is a true crusade, not against Islam itself, but against its fundamentalists. Americans may be socially conservative, but they are still tolerant of different beliefs – there would be no America otherwise. There are few fundamentalists in the sense of Islamic fundamentalists. And also nonetheless, it is becoming ever clearer Islamist fundamentalists only use the guise of religion to force the world into their vision of correctness, one that would bring us all back to the values of the medieval world. And the reason they want this is, they cannot compete in the modern world, so they want the world to change so that they would be the honchos. Talk about losers.
