More Imperialist Effrontery: US “Hopes" for "Free and Fair” Elections in Venezuela

The United States, the country with the world’s most incoherent and fraudulent electoral system, hopes for “free and fair” elections in Venezuela, “as in any other country in the world,” according to State Department spokesman Mike Hammer last Friday.*

The same words were uttered only minutes earlier by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson reports the right-wing daily El Universal in Caracas:

“Our position is clear: We hope that the Venezuelan people will be able to choose their government freely and fairly,” emphasized Jacobson, implicitly casting doubt over the integrity of the Venezuelan electoral system.**

They say that looking foolish never killed anyone. Perhaps Hammer and Jacobson were not aware that a few days earlier ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter heralded the Venezuelan electoral system as the best in the world, while the U.S. system, according to Carter, is “one of the worst.”

Several factors — the Obama-Romney confrontation, an electoral system whose basic principles were established in 1787, generalized corruption through unlimited million dollar corporate campaign fund contributions and political-cultural alienation — combine to once again rule out all hope of a truly democratic presidential election this November.

The U.S., the country most anxious to impose its version of democracy in every corner of the globe, has one of the world’s most complicated, incomprehensible and illogical electoral systems.

A few observations are sufficient. Unlike any other country in the world, each state or municipality determines its own balloting system: paper and pencil, optical scan or punch card, although the direct-recording electronic vote — managed by companies controlled by Republican interests — is becoming increasingly popular. Balloting systems vary according to each state and in each county within that state.

Every election time, thousands of duly registered voters are purged from voter rolls by means of a series of tricks like voter caging, which allows a voter to be excluded for failure to respond to a notice sent to his address.

The vast majority of victims of such exclusion procedures are black, Hispanic or members of racial minorities, sectors of the population more likely to vote Democrat. In Florida, for instance, over 30 percent of black men are not able to vote because of a criminal conviction.

The Washington Post calculated that more than 6 million people countrywide are registered more than once.

According to complaints after the vote count in 2004, the irregularities on Election Day were innumerable: Besides deliberate vote suppression in Democratic strongholds, vote-altering electronic ballot systems and arbitrary invalidation of votes, the vote count was deliberately manipulated in many districts. Votes by mail are continually subject to electoral fraud. In 2002 in Broward County, Miami, 104,000 votes were shown to have been omitted by the machines and as many as 55,000 absentee ballots went missing in the mail.

A U.S. citizen does not vote for his preferred candidate, but for a party that will appoint presidential electors. Their Electoral College will then elect the president without any obligation to respect the wishes of the electorate or award the presidency to the candidate winning the most votes.*** In 2000, Al Gore won more popular votes but George Bush got the White House by a majority in the Electoral College.

Electoral district boundaries are drawn and redrawn periodically to include more of the voter base of whichever party is in power.

Presidential elections always take place on a Tuesday, when the majority of voters are at work.

The mass media, heavily dependent on advertising revenue from large syndicates and reaping profits from the major parties’ million dollar campaigns, systematically ignore third-party candidates and avoid criticism of the system itself.

According to polls, a large majority of voters would like to elect the president by popular vote. However, it is evident that few politicians care to change a system that, in many cases, assures them almost automatic reelection.

And despite all this, State Department spokesman Mike Hammer continues to make inept remarks, suggesting that the U.S. electoral system is a model for mankind.

*Editor’s note: The author appears to have paraphrased Mike Hammer in this case, combining two separate sentences and adding the “as.” The original statement was “… that free and fair elections take place in any country in the hemisphere …. And again, we are going to be certainly looking at how it’s conducted, but not only in the United States but the rest of Latin America, and frankly, the world.”

** Translator’s note: Ms. Jacobson actually said, “Regarding the upcoming elections in Venezuela, […] it’s very clear that we look forward to the Venezuelan people being able to express their views freely in a fair election.”

***Editor’s note: In the U.S. electoral system, voters do not vote for a party but for a candidate. The Electoral College is a separate, nonpartisan body with 538 electors drawn from each party in proportion to the number of votes its presidential and vice-presidential candidates receive, and it is used only for presidential and vice-presidential elections.