2012 alert: America can’t seem to get its voting system right

Those of us from the so called developing world have always looked up to America as the paragon of liberal democracy. However recent developments in the run up to the 2012 US presidential elections have often caused me to rethink this perception. On Rachel Maddow’s show this evening I just learned the Secretary of State for Colorado (Republican) is suing Denver’s election clerk and recorder (Democrat) for mailing out ballots to inactive voters. This is unbelievable. How can a state official, expected to ensure full participation of citizens in the electoral process go to such lengths to disenfranchise his own people?

This is the kind of backhanded tactics that happens in undeveloped electoral systems not the US of A. Secretary of State Scott Gessler says he wants to prevent voting fraud while Ms. Johnson, the top election official says this is really about fairness since most of the inactive voters happen to come from minority and low income earning communities.

It’s admirable for Mr Gessler to curb voter fraud in elections but what's the evidence that inactive voters are more likely to commit fraud? Is there any correlation at all? After all, this is the United States, a country which claims perfection when it comes to electoral politics. I mean these are the folks who invented the ballot box. Surely, they should have a trusted way of checking voter fraud. If this happened back in Accra, Nairobi or Lagos, I’m sure you’d find western officials breathing down their necks and threatening sanctions.

America often holds many countries accountable for their electoral practices, often excoriating them for any form of voter mishap or electoral inaccuracies. Maybe it’s about time we also sent election observers to monitor their elections.

I’d think the system will err on the side of participation rather than disenfranchisement. Mr Gessler has even ordered election officials not to send out ballots to soldiers fighting abroad who haven’t voted in recent elections, classifying them also as inactive. This sounds pretty insensitive and unfair to me.

I'm astonished because if America can’t get its voting right, then perhaps the whole democratic philosophy might just not be all that it’s cracked out to be.