Move over, hanging chad..
I’ll take your hanging chad and I’ll raise you 40 characters and 27 days.
Americans still feeling embarrassed about the 2000 presidential contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush can be forgiven a touch of schadenfreude after last week’s contest in Austria.
The second and decisive round of that country’s presidential contest was originally held in the summer but invalidated by the constitutional court after irregularities were cited.
But then the rescheduled election of Oct. 2 was postponed for more than two months because of faulty glue on the ballots.
Austria’s just-announced word of the year, Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung, may not quite roll off the tongue like the addition to America’s vernacular 16 years ago, but what it lacks in simplicity it more than makes up for in Teutonic completeness.
It means postponement of the presidential election runoff. Austrian newspaper Die Presse quips that the word is as long as the process.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/overheard-1481332763