Reefer Madness?

[Arjan Hulsebos]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:37:57 +0100, M Holmes wrote
> Arjan Hulsebos writes:
> 
> > One of the "funniest" things that happened shortly thereafter was that
> > the US sent a bunch of observers to an African country to oversee the
> > elections there.  I bet quite a lot of voters must have thought "look
> > closely, you lot, this is how you do it".
> 
> I dunno. I think the US coes out with a lot of credit in fact. In 
> many countries and at many points in history a hung election has 
> been cause for civil war, coup d'etat, riots etc.

True enough, sadly.

> The US put two armies of lawyers into three separate courts to sort 
> it out and pretty much everyone else switched back to CSI or NASCAR until
> they got back with the result.

When there are court battles over the result of the elections, *something*
*somewhere* is pretty fubarred. 

> That is exactly how it's all supposed to work and y'all should give
> yourselves a national pat on the back instead of beating yourselves 
> up over it.

No, not at all. No court should determine the outcome of an election, that's
the prerogative of the voters. There should be protocols on who is allowed to
vote, who is allowed to be voted, how a voter should vote, and how to count
the votes. You may have court battles over that _before_ the elections. Once
that has been sorted out, you only have to follow the protocols.

Gr,

Arjan H