Thank you people of America
The world lets out a collective sigh. Thank you to all those people who voted and haven’t previously. It matters a great deal to us residents of the rest of the world!
Now we have a couple of things to look out for… first, will the voting problems still be investigated and then resolved by the new government. It could be the win would have been even more striking without the voting problems. Whatever, it is unlikely the vote is a completely accurate representation of the choices of the people.
Second… will Obama actually make a difference, or cave in to all the usual lobbying pressure.
There’s a very interesting film online about voting problems in USA:
http://www.stealingamericathemovie.org/
Thank you once again America.
US Voting system – broken!
The other day, thanks to Garr Reynolds’ always useful Presentation Zen blog, I watch this video of Seth Godin talking about how things are so often “broken” and how people are complicit in creating the breakage or ignoring it, or not complaining about it.
Now it’s a very amusing and quite thought-provoking talk. I now look at things even more critically than I used to, and annoy my wife by telling her how broken something is.
Anyway, the US voting system is broken. Ignore the problems with ballot papers, dodgy voting machines, and the whole lack of security in the electronic voting machines…
The US voting system is broken, I can tell, because all I hear on the news is how people are voting EARLY and yet it is taking them 3-4 hours in many cases, from entering the building to casting their vote.
This is utterly utterly broken, and you have to wonder if it is broken intentionally (one of Seth Godin’s 7 or so reasons for being broken is deliberately broken by the maker).
After all, a long delay to vote is rather a good way of filtering out certain kinds of voters – those with low paid jobs and unhelpful bosses – those who are carers – those who are young and have something better to do with their four hours. Could voting delays alone be the single nascent reason behind the Republican presence in the White House for so long?
Can you imagine the outcry if it took people 4 hours to vote in the UK!?
For your information, last time I voted in the UK it took 5 minutes.
