The sick man of the world’s democracies

Franck Biancheri - 05.11.2004

EUOBSERVER / DEBATE - Looking at the huge queues outside polling stations on 2 November, I had to ask myself some simple questions.

How many Europeans would have left such queues, refusing to wait for up to seven hours (as happened in some places in Ohio) to cast their votes?

And, how many Europeans would then, the next day, have taken to the street to denounce this flaw in the electoral process?

I came to the conclusion that, in both cases, the answer would be the same: a lot.

We still do not know how many Americans decided that they did not want to 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 demonstrated against the extraordinary situation after polling day.

Growing transatlantic rift
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 ‘sick man of the world's democracies’.

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