(forwarded)



1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third
world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime
minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of
that nation's secret police.

2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won
based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's
pre-democracy past.

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's victory' turned on disputed
votes cast in a province governed by his brother!

4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district
heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of
voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

5. Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing
for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in
near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.

6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were
intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under
the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.

7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and
that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer,
certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.

8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed
a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the
disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.

9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major
province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his
nation and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner
was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions
on the high court of that nation.

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