Portrait of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown

[RebelYell]

With only nine days to go and the polls showing Bush and Kerry still neck and neck, the result is once agin likely to turn on the minutiae of the voting system. But this time the whole country seems poised to descend into post-election chaos. Andrew Gumbel reports on the traumatising effects of this bitter campaign and how, as the world's most powerful democracy talks of exporting freedom to Iraq, it is at risk of becoming an object of international ridicule.

24 October 2004

No need to wonder if this year's US presidential election is headed for another meltdown: the meltdown has already started. The voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers fully armed and ready with an intimate knowledge of the nation's byzantine election laws have flocked to court to cry foul in half a dozen states.

Nine days out from election day, we don't yet know whether the state-by-state arithmetic will lead to a post-election stalemate similar to the 36-day battle for Florida in 2000. It is, of course, possible that the margins of victory in the 50 states will be wide enough to avert the worst - even if overall conditions are likely to fall short of the usual definition of a free and fair election.

Given the nail-bitingly close numbers in the opinion polls, however, Election 2004 could just as easily produce a concatenation of knockdown, drag-out fights in several states at once, making the débâcle in Florida four years ago look, in retrospect, like the constitutional equivalent of a vicarage tea party.

More:
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=575453&host=3&dir=70

[RebelYell]

1. Kick n/t

[annabanana]

2. when the pollsters find out how wrong they have been,

and when the Kerry landslide is in full swing, the repugs won't be able to cheat ENOUGH to steal this election