Lamenting the "disgrace" of the American election system--"the most error-prone, the most susceptible to fraud, the most vulnerable to unfairness and one of the least technologically sophisticated on earth"--Frum notes that ...
In France, elections are the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior.... In Germany, an independent federal returning officer oversees a complex state and federal voting system. In Canada, federal elections are managed by a specialized agency.... Mexico ... created in the 1990s a respected independent agency, the Federal Electoral Institute.
Oh, David, you innocent thing.
Try to imagine the uproar if, say, a President Obama were to propose, say, a Federal Election Agency, which would oversee from Washington all electoral activities, from ballot design to voting hours. You think "death panels" were a BFD? Child's play--but a whisper of hysteria compared to the thundering lunacy unleashed by even the suggestion of a competent, centralized voting authority.
Besides, the error-prone, fraudulent, vastly unfair and technologically primitive system we do have allows each side the not unreasonable opportunity to scream We wuz robbed! when the other guy wins.
So you see, David, in doing things our way, the American way, neither side ever really loses.
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