To: lawdog who wrote (92184 ) 11/28/2000 4:26:36 PM From: Mao II Respond to of 769670 Foreigners Studying American Democracy! Following email received today: This is from an article in which a Zimbabwe politician was > >> quoted as saying that children should study this event closely for it > >> shows that election fraud is not only a third world phenomenon. > >> > >> 1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third > >> world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime > >> minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of > >> that nation's secret police (CIA). > >> > >> 2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won > >> based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the > >> nation's pre-democracy past. > >> > >> 3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on > >> disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother! > >> > >> 4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district > >> heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of > >> voters to vote for the wrong candidate. > >> > >> 5. Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste, > >> fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to > >> vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's > >> candidacy. > >> > >> 6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were > >> intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under > >> the authority of the self-declared winner's brother. > >> > >> 7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and > >> that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, > >> certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error. > >> > >> 8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party > >> opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the > >> ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district. > >> > >> > >> 9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a > >> major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in > >> his nation and actually led the nation in executions. > >> > >> 10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner > >> was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions > >> on the high court of that nation. > >> > >> None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything > >> other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I > >> imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad > >> tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere.