X Marks The Spot

Most of the world hopes that Mr Obama gets elected as US President in two weeks, rather than Mr McCain.

The likelihood of this happening is, however, greatly reduced by the blatant attempts at vote-rigging being carried out by the Republicans and their allies. We all know how dodgy Bush's last victory was, but it seems that legislation intended to prevent such problems is being used to make it worse.

America likes to trumpet itself as the most democratic nation in the world and is quick to castigate other countries whose electoral standards aren't up to scratch, but it really needs to take a long hard look at itself.

No wonder their system is faulty and, at worse, corrupt, when each state, or county, or whatever, has its own methods for registering voters, collecting votes, counting votes. Punch machines, computers, etc.

Why couldn't the US adopt our system? Everyone is required to register, annually. A polling card is sent to each registered voter at election time. You take this to the voting booth, where it is swapped for a voting slip. You then WRITE a cross next to your favoured candidate, pop the slip in a box and it goes off to be counted by human beings who are monitored by election officials and members of all interested parties. It's a system that's worked for hundreds of years and is incredibly difficult to subvert.

But it seems to me that it's in the interests of the Republican party to make voting more and more complex. The more difficult it is, the more you can mess with the system...