While I was looking at the huge queues outside polling stations on November 2nd, I wondered about two very simple facts: how many Europeans would have left such queues, refusing to wait for 2, 3, 4, or even 7 hours (like in some places in Ohio) for casting their votes? How many Europeans will the next day take the street to denounce such a flaw within the electoral process? I came to the conclusions that in both cases the answer will be the same: a lot. But looking at the USA today, we still do not know how many Americans decided that they did not want or could not afford to wait for many hours in order to be able to exercise their voting right. And we can see that nobody demonstrates against the amazing situation we saw during this election day.

I believe that this example says a lot about the growing rift between Americans and Europeans. It also says a lot about the current status of US democracy, which has become the ‘sickman of world democracies’. As were stating the OSCE election observers, the US election system is worst than many in Third World countries and is totally unable to match the basic criteria for a 21st century democracy.

First, it is not a national election, neither a 50 states election, it is an election organized in 13000 different ways, one for each district. Therefore, without one or just a few election laws, there is no way to ensure its fairness. Fraud is already part of the game because of the obsolescence of a system dating from the early 19th century. For instance, due to local regulations, OSCE observers could not enter polling stations in one state … guess which one …. Ohio!

Second, without a proper ID card system, securing the identification of voters is almost impossible. As one of the OSCE observer was pointing out, the US should be using the ‘ink on the thumb’ system, as in Africa for instance, to prevent people to vote twice. Meanwhile, such a lack of a credible identification system (people use drivers license or social security numbers which are known to be exposed to huge frauds in the US) generates the messy attempt of control through the voters lists, and paving the way for all sorts of litigation while not preventing multiple votes.

Third, the US voting system is unable to deliver anything but machines which cannot give any warranty on their reliability (electronic voting with no paper printing control system), nor on their accuracy (some of them looks like you need to be an engineer to understand how you must cast your vote). Meanwhile the belief that private companies can do a better job than publicly owned voting system is casting a big doubt on the whole process, especially when those companies have direct political connections with one candidate.

And fourth, which is most certainly the shocking image most Europeans have kept in mind from this election day, the insufficient number of polling stations which generated a denial of access to the election itself for a large number of US citizens who could not wait for such a long time, or would not. There we have a core problem with several worrying aspects. Contrarily to what the US press (and experts or politicians) is repeating, the fact there are huge queues obliging people to wait for hours before casting their vote is not the sign of an healthy democracy, but rather the opposite, a sign that the democratic system is unable to match the demand from its citizens. It is not due to a large unpredictable number of voters (everybody knew that turnout will be higher than last election) because the scale of US voters (between 100 and 120 millions) is nothing exceptional.
Somehow it puts this US election closer to the recent election in Afghanistan than to one in any developed world democracy.
A question then immediately comes to mind: how, and by whom, was the number of polling stations decided upon? It would be interesting to know because limiting the number of polling station is a very well-known “trick” for those willing to deny access to the election of large segments of their population. Workers with low income, who cannot afford to miss a day work, are for instance part of such a group. Young voters are another one, who, unless they are highly politically motivated, are most likely going to turn away from a 3 hours waiting election line. And so on. This is pure voters’ discrimination in action.
But, and that what is making Europeans very worried about the status of US democracy, nobody reacts in the USA. Journalists, politicians, experts, citizens …. stay mute. They seem to consider such queues as part of a normal election process. But it is not, at least for a wealthy country (5 billions $ have been spent for the electoral campaign) with a long electoral tradition. The next day, in almost any European countries, citizens would have demonstrated against what would have been perceived as a massive fraud, a de facto disenfranchisement of entire groups of voters. But in today’s USA, people grumble on their own, or cheer the success of their own candidate, as if democracy was not, first of all, depending on the quality of the electoral process, rather than who is the winner.

From this November on, the rest of the world is wondering whose will was exactly expressed during this US election, observing that it is very uncertain that it was the American people’s will. This is what is heavily discussed since yesterday throughout Europe. This is what I have been discussing with my US friends. This is what I want to share with you today even if it brings very transatlantically incorrect topics on the agenda, because this is part of the new image of the USA in the world.

Paris
Franck Biancheri