Looking into the future the Pelican feeding its young from a self-induced wound in its own breast (as depicted, mysteriously, on the state flag of Louisiana) is accepted as an appropriate symbol of both self-sacrifice and rebirth. Through his selfless efforts, man is raised from the slavery of ignorance to the condition of freedom conferred by wisdom.
   Given the current state of affairs in Louisiana, one hopes that the understanding of t he Pelican as a symbol shall point the way towards a new consciousness of ourselves as a whole, and lead us to face our futures with strength, grace, wisdom and faith, to learn from our mistakes and carry our successes and zest for living to future generations.



Self-righteous U.S. should look at its own election


Vancouver Sun
December 8, 2004
By Stephen Hume


In a democracy, all citizens are equal. However, among democracies, some appear to think themselves more equal than others and thus entitled to self-righteous huffing and puffing where humble self-examination might be in order.

George Orwell’s send-up of inflated, holier-than-thou rhetoric sprang to mind as I listened to the fervid tub-thumping in the United States about the political schemozzle in Ukraine, where democratic process struggles to be born amid widespread allegations of electoral irregularities.

Piecing the complaints together from various accounts, they seem to include: Voter turnouts exceeding the numbers of those registered to vote; intimidation of voters to either encourage or discourage voting; erroneous counting of ballots; exit polls which indicated a commanding lead for candidate only to have the results turn out to be the opposite, and so on.

Clearly, with thousands of such complaints, Ukraine’s election results were suspect and the people took to the streets demanding another opportunity to render a decision at the ballot box that’s as clean as possible.

So what should we make of the growing list of similar complaints about alleged irregularities at the polls during the recent U.S. elections?

There, the complaints appear to include: Voter turnouts that exceed the number of registered voters; intimidation of some minority voters; erroneous counting of ballots; exit polls in three key jurisdictions which indicated a commanding lead for one candidate only to have the results turn out to be the opposite-a statistical anomaly against which some scholars reportedly say the odds are 250 million to one.

It seems to me that the much bigger question for everyone in the U.S., Republican and Democrats alike, should be how their country, which holds itself up as the paragon of democratic virtue that the world so needs, can conduct an election that winds up resembling in many respects precisely the kind of goat show it rails against in the Ukraine.

And the question is a fair one. The Americans themselves invite it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance; they tirelessly remind themselves and the rest of us.

It follows that a genuine democracy deserves no less than continuous and rigorous scrutiny – and never so much as when those who wrap themselves in democracy’s mantle presume to lecture others about how to conduct political affairs.

Let’s see, according to one report in the Boston Globe last week, a non-partisan foundation dedicated to identifying procedural irregularities has now tabulated 30,000 “election indictments” during the last U.S. vote.

Many of those cited in the Globe bear dismaying similarities to complaints from the Ukraine. And reports cited from other newspapers and now flying around the blogosphere. Provide a host of other oddities.

In North Carolina, according to Brian C. Mooney’s report in the Globe, voting machines in one county simply didn’t record 4,000 votes. In Ohio, Nebraska and in Washington State – where fewer than 50 votes separated the two candidates for governor – he reported that thousands of ballots were counted twice. And he reports that in one polling precinct in the key state of Ohio voting machines registered 3,893 votes for one candidate when only 638 people cast ballots.

And that’s just the start of weirdness.

The Chicago Tribune reported last Saturday that the number of dead people registered to vote in six key swing states totaled more than 181,000. The paper’s Geoff Dougherty said that in New Mexico, where the margin between the two candidates was 6,000 votes, 5,000 dead folks were on the voters list.

This kind of nonsense is inexcusable for an advanced nation, which assigns itself as the model to which developing countries struggling to establish a democracy should aspire.

A country that can go to the moon should be competent to run a clean and efficient election in which the outcomes are trusted and indisputable.

Better, perhaps, to heed the advice of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who wrote last week in the Chicago Sun-Times that while his political leaders pontificate about voting irregularities elsewhere, in the U.S. massive and systematic irregularities go largely unremarked.

Democracy, Jackson said, should not be for export only.

shume@islandnet.com