dispatches from the southern front...

Election time is upon us again, or at least our neighbours to the south. The US has had a pretty tough time getting this fundamental piece of democracy right in recent years, so people of all political stripes are feeling rather anxious about how the vote will go on November 7 when the country is poised to hand at least part of Congress back to the Democrats. In the most recent US elections hopes ran high that the Democrats would either retain or regain power, but a lot of "voting irregularities" and subsequent conspiracy theories of outright election-stealing by the Republicans kind of killed the mood of optimism in more moderate and progressive camps.

A good friend forwarded to me an excerpt from an essay in the NY Times Books section on this very topic by UK Guardian's American editor Michael Kinsley, in which he unpacks the thorny issue of the recent US Presidential election. I've posted the excerpt below (though the whole essay is well worth the read):

The great flaw in American democracy is not electoral irregularities, purposeful or accidental. It's not money (which, even under current law, cannot in the end actually buy votes). It's not even the inexplicable failure of all other Americans to vote my way or of politicians to enact my own agenda. It's not the broken promises and the outright lying, although we're getting close. The biggest flaw in our democracy is the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty.

Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don't believe. There is no reward for logical consistency, and no punishment for changing your story depending on the circumstances. Yet one minor exercise in disingenuousness can easily have a greater impact on an election than any number of crooked voting machines. And it seems to me, though I can't prove it, that this problem is getting worse and worse.