Us and the Elections

[sierra_le_oli]

Four years ago, I was sick and couldn't get to sleep so I decided to watch the US election coverage for a short while. I wound up watching the numbers and states dance through the night and into the morning. My strongest memory is CNN calling Florida for Gore, with a journalist remarking that if they got it wrong they'd be eating crow. Five minutes

Comments

[knell]

I'm kind of quietly hoping that regardless of the outcome, this contest will encourage people in a lot of the world to remember that using their vote is important. There are plenty of reports of hour-long queues to vote in parts of the USA at the moment, which reminds me of the first universal elections in South Africa, not so long ago...

[sierra_le_oli]

I hope so too. I am, however, concerned that people won't be able to get past the 'stupid American' prejudice and thus won't make the link between the American situation and their own.

[sshi]

yeah, the one good thing that will come out of this, regardless of outcome, is hopefully the increased politicisation of a whole load of (previously apathetic) Americans

what I saw of the british and irish coverage was odd too - skynews were doing the flashy graphic thing and explaining the electoral college with buckets of aplomb ('sure, we understand this, oh yeah, baby') while RTE were doing the slightly bemused thing ('and you thought that our voting system was complicated!')

[sierra_le_oli]

You should have seen the Ken Doll from France 2 when he got his hands on one of New York's dummy voting machines (it's the type with lots of buttons and the Big Red Lever). He could barely keep a straight face while demonstrating it.