I haven’t really had any time to write about anything for the last few weeks so I’ve only been doing link lists, but this one passed to me today by a co-worker really deserves comment.
If it comes across as excessively anti-American then sorry, that wasn’t the intention, and I don’t believe that anywhere else has really got it totally right either, but some of these are just mind-boggling.
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn’t show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That’s more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don’t show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
By my calculation that means 60.4% of eligable voters took part in the presidential elections. The UK is no better though… according to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2005 Wikipedia], the turnout at the 2005 general election was 61.3% of eligable voters…
I agree, the low turnout at recent UK general elections is also extremely worrying. That Blair can win with only 35% of the votes (22% of the electorate) and no real opposition does seem wrong.