A really good idea (Sunday 31 October 2004) From Morning Star

THE statement was hard-hitting and its threat was unmistakable. It gave notice that gerrymandering in the presidential election would not be tolerated.

'If the election fails to meet international standards, a variety of measures to hold officials responsible for electoral misconduct accountable will be considered,' it said.

But, far from this being a warning against any rerun of 2000 when family and political allies of George W Bush stole the Florida election to put him in the White House, it was issued by the Bush administration to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe about the poll in Ukraine.

The game was given away when the statement went on to warn: 'Bilateral relations and integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions will suffer.'

It was a shot across the bows of Ukraine's electorate that voting for outgoing President Leonid Kuchma's nominee Viktor Yanukovych rather than for former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko would be seen as opting for closer relations with Moscow rather than being welcomed into the embrace of NATO and the European Union.

Just in case there should be any misunderstanding, the international imperialist media is united in describing Mr Yushchenko as 'a reformer,' that now debased term for politicians prepared to ingratiate themselves with imperialism by advocating economic austerity, privatisation and opening-up of the domestic economy to penetration by transnational capital.

As much as imperialism's leaders such as President Bush advocate these policies for states like Ukraine, they reject such a programme for the US.

This should not be surprising, since they also denounce suggestions that US elections would benefit from outside observers who could rule on the acceptability or otherwise of polling procedures.

Certainly, the involvement of a trusted international body of observers might have been expected to have produced complaints about the misleading ballot papers used in Florida in 2000.

These so-called 'butterfly ballots' are believed to have resulted in thousands of ballots cast by elderly Jewish voters in one Miami precinct being cast for Pat Buchanan rather than their intended recipient Al Gore.

Lost votes are a pity at any time, but having votes transposed to a candidate who referred to Hitler as a 'man of great courage' and who denied the Holocaust as 'group fantasies of martyrdom' is sickening.

Florida's voting machinery, supervised by Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State Katherine Harris, also denied Mr Gore a further, mainly black, 85,000 ballots by purging supposed 'ex-felons' and disqualifying hundreds of overseas votes.

And they are at it again. Leaked documents from Bush HQ in Florida indicate that lists of names and addresses of voters in black areas have been drawn up to challenge their participation in the election.

No wonder Michael Moore is enlisting activists with video cameras all over the US to attend polling stations and to record instances of rigging and voter intimidation.

Mahatma Gandhi's legendary response to what he thought of Western civilisation is as applicable to US democracy - 'I think it would be a very good idea.'



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