What We Learned

 
by thezman

Elections are one of those windows into the nature of a society, like the roads or public transport systems. It is a manifestation of the real nature of society. In the case of elections, it is not about the results, but about how the election is run. Orderly, well run societies have orderly, well run elections. The results are known soon after the votes are cast and no one questions them. In disorderly, low-trust societies, the vote is messy and chaotic and no one takes the results at face value.

You see that with yesterday’s election. Most people voting remember when you stopped off to vote on the way home from work or maybe before work. Office people could vote at their lunch break, because it only took a half hour at most. In most of the country, even big urban areas, it was rare to run into long lines or delays. Today, the opposite is now true. It is rare to experience an orderly, well run polling station. Instead it is long lines, broken equipment and lots of shenanigans.

Of course, those chaotic voting stations are not able to tally the votes in a timely manner, so the count carries on for days in some areas. Back in the days of mechanical voting machines and paper ballots, the vote was counted in hours. If the polls in a state closed at seven, the vote was known by nine. Again, there were exceptions, as nothing is perfect, but they were exceptions. Yesterday’s vote will not be known for weeks and much of it will be decided in the courts.

Now, one big reason for the delay is the people counting the votes need time to rig the results in such a way that makes it hard for the courts to see it. Pennsylvania, for example, is furiously printing up new ballots for people who did not vote. These will be filled out for Biden and other party candidates, then dropped off at post offices around the state so they can be added to the real votes. They now have nine days to make up enough fake ballots to tip the state to Mumbly Joe.

In states like California, general incompetence rules the day. Since most of the voters now are foreign born, the results are known in advance. It’s why no one bothers to campaign in the state. Still, in order to maintain the fiction of democracy they run elections, but it takes them weeks to produce a result. Like everything else about the state, their elections are very third world, which is no surprise as the majority of the population is from primitive societies. Demographics are destiny.

It used to be that America would send international observers to a country to make sure their elections were free and fair. The claim was the government was either too crooked or too inept to manage an election, even if they wanted to do it. A gaggle of experts from the West would be sent in to help organize the voting and make sure everything was done properly. These international observers would supervise the counting so that everyone could trust the result.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot. The UN should probably step in and start supervising American elections, because the government is so corrupt and incompetent, no one can trust them to run an election. Iraq now has more orderly and honest elections than most states in America. Iraq actually requires voters to present an ID and they make voters do the purple finger thing to prevent ballot stuffing. Maybe the Iraqi government can send supervisors to Pennsylvania.

In the coming weeks, as this circus drags on in the courts, lots of people will compare it to the so-called banana republics. That is not fair, as those banana republics did not ask for democracy. It was imposed on them. Left to their own devices, they would have been happy with some form of big-man government. It was Western business that demanded democracy, so they could more easily exploit these countries. It is easier to bribe parliamentary mediocrities than an oligarch or despot.

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