Tuesday 3rd of November

 

Subject: Tuesday 3rd of November.

We read, if we have a mind to, of the problems facing the 2020 Presidential election and the issue of mailed votes, particularly in this time of pandemic when the last thing people, particularly the old and vulnerable, want to do is stand in a queue to cast their vote. The intricate construction of American State legislature puts at variance different States governing the rules of how people vote. The delays in counting the votes, some of it manufactured. The gerrymandering of the postal service to the extent that Trumps appointee to run the service is openly hostile to the efficacy of the service he runs to get the votes to the counting centres on time. The media circus which feeds this hostility by misleading the public on their rights. There's even a suggestion that whilst amongst the manufactured chaos, Fox News will claim victory for Trump and further a misrepresentative judiciary now featuring a bias towards Trump as he appoints more right wing judges to the Supreme Court, will do his bidding. And then of course you have that strange anomaly of the Electoral Collage, initially set up in the constitution to protect minorities against the majority but now an instrument for over turning the popular vote fore instance  Hillary Clinton clearly won the election in 2016 on the basis of the majority vote but lost in the Electoral College. Each State has a number of Electoral votes dependent on the number of people residing in the State and It's these Electoral votes which actually decide who is to become President, not the actual votes cast across the country as a whole. This may seem undemocratic and it is but at the time of the Founding Fathers who wished to balance the conflicting aims within the country the College was founded to cast what was thought to be an impartial vote, democracy and placing your fate in the hands of the common man was thought risky.

Another spanner might have been thrown into the works with Donald Trump falling foul to Covid 19 and we will have to wait to see how that plays out.

We talk about the farcical elections in Russia where opposition politicians are poisoned, we think of totalitarian China and it's autocratic communist rulers where opposition is precluded and dissidents disappear, we think of Turkey and the internment of much of its free press, never mind the despots in so many countries across the globe where the politicians quest for political power drives them to exterminate the opposition and you see that the American system, faults and all is so much better. t's only when a man like Trump, without any scruples when it comes to power who has even floated the idea that he will not step down if he feels thwarted,  that the Free World will hold its breath on Tuesday 3rd of November.