Eideard

Nearly 11 years after the 2000 presidential election brought the corruption idiosyncrasies of the United States’ Electoral College into full view, 62% of Americans say they would amend the U.S. Constitution to replace that system for electing presidents with a popular vote system. Barely a third, 35%, say they would keep the Electoral College.

Gallup’s initial measure of support for the Electoral College with this wording was conducted in the first few days after the 2000 presidential election in which the winner remained undeclared pending a recount in Florida. At that time, it was already clear that Democratic candidate Al Gore had won the national popular vote over Republican George W. Bush, but that the winner of the election would be the one who received Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes…

Republicans have grown somewhat more amenable to adopting a popular vote system over the past decade. Now, for the first time since 2000, the majority of Republicans favor it. Independents are not quite as supportive as Democrats of the popular vote system, but the majority of them have consistently favored it.

Additionally, Gallup finds little difference in the views of Americans of various age groups on changing how the country elects presidents. Support for amending the Constitution on this matter is 58% among 18- to 34-year-olds, 64% among 35-to 54-year-olds, and 62% among those 55 and older.

From 1967 through 1980, Gallup periodically asked Americans about replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote system using different question wording, and each time, the majority favored it. The issue was particularly relevant during this period because the popular vote in the 1968 and 1976 presidential elections was so closely divided…

Next question? What do you think Congress will do about responding to the will of the people?

I thought so, too. They are truly useless.

Standing in line at a polling station in Tunis
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Nine months after a people’s revolution ousted the despot Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and inspired uprisings across the region, Tunisia on Sunday was holding the first vote of the Arab spring. The small country of 10 million is being watched by the Arab world as an experiment in moving from dictatorship to democracy.

If the elections usher in a credible new political class after 50 years of a one-party state, they could boost the democratic hopes for neighbouring post-Gaddafi Libya and Egypt, where there is profound uncertainty…

“There’s an overwhelming sense of joy and relief,” says Mehdi Lassoued, a tyre company worker, wrapped in the Tunisian flag. “I feel we are finally moving on, that we can finish this revolution, vote for a legitimate government.”

Tunis university professor Ghofrane Ben Miled says: “There’s so much expectation and excitement on the street. I didn’t sleep, I was wired. It felt like the nights during the revolution, but calmer. I’m 42 and I’ve never voted before.”

Flag-festooned cars with horns blaring are everywhere and hundreds queue in the sun, wearing homemade paper hats. Asked who the election winner will be, most say: “We all will…”

There are now 110 political parties and scores of independents. Tunisians will appoint a 217-seat assembly with the specific role of rewriting the constitution to prepare for parliamentary elections next year.

A complex proportional representation system means that no one party will dominate the assembly…

A high turnout is expected – as high as 80% in some precincts. Full results will be released on Monday…

Amid the optimism there is a sense of vigilance. Many say that the people staged the revolution and they will take to the streets again if they feel they are being cheated or let down.

RTFA. Lots of accurate anecdotal description of people coming out to vote for the first time in their lives.

Enjoy it. Help the revolution if you’re in a position to do so. They are leading the Arab Spring.

The Roman Catholic Church reacted harshly [predictably]… to a bill proposed by Mexico City legislators that would require all couples to sign a prenuptial agreement specifying how to handle child custody and other issues in case of divorce — and estimating how long the marriage is expected to last.

Sponsors of the bill submitted this week in the city council say the proposal aims to cut down on the lengthy, nasty divorce proceedings choking the capital district’s courts, by making potential couples decide about monetary and custody issues by mutual agreement before they get married.

But the bill also says “the duration of the marriage will be bound by the terms that the couple negotiate in the familial agreement, which shall not be less than two years…”

“People can specify terms of 99 years, or ’til death do us part,’ if they think the marriage, or their lives, are going to last that long,” Carlos Torres said.

Catholic leaders don’t see it that way…

“This is a proposal made by people who do not understand the nature of marriage,” Valdemar said. “It is not a commercial contract; it is a contract between two people for a life project, and the creation of a family.”

“This denigrates the concept of the family … and makes it more like a pact between friends,” he said…

Equal friends at that. Interested in running their own lives as they see fit – instead of leaving everything in the hands of a sectarian rulebook from the 14th Century.

“We are looking for solutions to problems that are seen every day in family courts … in which there is emotional blackmail, or the children are used as pawns,” Torres said. “This would cut down of the torturous proceedings at the time of a divorce.”

The bill is meant to solve a big problem in the city of 8.9 million people, where divorce proceedings are so costly, painful and time consuming that many people just skip them and start a new family.

The Roman Catholic church has always opposed democracy and the freedom of individuals to order their own lives. The obvious decline of their power and profits speaks volumes of how that opposition has failed.

That the proposed legislation also allows for parents to agree beforehand on what religious education – if any – their children might endure is another challenge to the church’s political power. As it should.

Campaign billboard for Salem al-Shaali
Reuters Photo by Mahmoud Habboush

The United Arab Emirates is gearing up for the second elections in its 40-year history, but officials and candidates are finding it tough to answer a commonly asked question: why can’t everyone vote?

The UAE government in July hand-picked 129,000 voters to elect 20 of the 40 members of the Federal National Council (FNC), an advisory assembly with very limited parliamentary powers.

The pool represents 12 per cent of Emirati nationals in the Arabian Peninsula nation who will vote on September 24.

The rest of the council will be directly appointed by the Gulf Arab state, which is governed by several ruling families that transfer power from father to son, or brother to brother…

The wealthy Gulf oil nation has been virtually untouched by the Arab Spring, witnessing from afar the toppling of autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and any hint of dissent has been swiftly stamped out.

This week’s elections are part of stated efforts by the seven emirate member states to gradually introduce representation and educate voters and candidates in its methods in an orderly way… Uh, OK.

The UAE government held seminars in the past few weeks for candidates about the rules of campaigning while at least one non-profit organization held a training course on “how to run a successful campaign.”

But many candidates still appear to lack a basic understanding of the FNC’s constitutional powers, which are virtually nil…Salem al-Shaali, a Dubai candidate, is campaigning on a platform to hand more power to the FNC.

He pledges, in an ad in Al Bayan, a Dubai newspaper, to “help FNC members obtain the right tools to be effective in the decision-making process.”

There have been growing demands by former FNC members and intellectuals to give the assembly real powers, introduce universal suffrage and fully elect the council, created in 1972…

Less than 7,000 people, or less than 1 percent of the population, were allowed to vote in the UAE’s first elections for the council in 2006.

I guess proceeding in the direction of democracy and participation of the electorate is always a positive. Still, there should be some effort for the voting franchise to move a little faster than, say, molasses on a cold day in Alaska.

RTFA for more history, anecdotal coverage from Reuters.

Mayor Nash

Be careful before starting a Boy Scout troop in Gould, Ark. Or a Harry Potter fan club. Or a baseball team. The City Council adopted an ordinance last week making it illegal to form any kind of group without its permission.

That is a clear violation of the Constitution, legal scholars agree. But it is also a sign of just how nasty politics has gotten in Gould, a farming town of 1,100 some 70 miles southeast of Little Rock, where members of the Council have struggled with a local political group that seeks to influence how the town is governed. The mayor, Earnest Nash Jr., also happens to be a member of the political group, the Gould Citizens Advisory Council.

Even by the standards of small-town dramas, Gould’s situation is bleak. The town faces nearly $300,000 in unpaid taxes, and there have been frequent clashes among the mayor, the advisory group and the City Council over how to repay it. Those clashes — and a perception by the City Council that the citizens’ group is seeking too much influence — led to the ban on new organizations…

Last week, the Council overrode the mayor’s veto of two other controversial measures. One required that the citizens advisory council cease to exist. The other made it illegal for the mayor to meet with “any organization in any location” either “inside or outside Gould city limits” without the Council’s permission.

The advisory council, which calls itself a nonpartisan group that educates voters and raises money for public causes, says it will continue its work. But the City Council, in one ordinance, accused the group of “causing confusion and discourse among the citizens” by harshly criticizing local officials at public meetings.

As a result, the City Council said, “No new organizations shall be allowed to exist in the City of Gould without approval from a majority of the City Council…”

In the meantime, Mr. Nash said he would continue to do his job exactly as he always had.

“Technically, what I’m doing I guess is illegal,” he said. “But if I’m going to get arrested for meeting with citizens or letting them form their own groups, that’s a pretty good reason to go to jail.”

No doubt Congress wouldn’t mind passing similar legislation if very many voters decided to go their own way outside the limits of our 2-Party country club commedia della politica.

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one. The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland…

Dr Wiener continued: “In a large number of modern secular democracies, there’s been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%.”

The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the “non-religious” category.

They found…that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them. And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.

However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a “network structure” more representative of the one at work in the world.

“Obviously we don’t really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society,” he said. However, he told BBC News that he thought it was “a suggestive result”.

Overdue. Not that I think philosophical idealism will vanish. We have a few too many genes that need to update before that could happen. But, so-called organized religion appears to be working as diligently as possible to become a force for regressive, even reactionary behavior. Probably, because those who profit the most from incumbency fear the only way to maintain power and profit is by drawing back into fundamentalism for protection.

Since the study concerned educated secular democracies, the United States obviously has little need to fear a change.

Abboud al-Zumar went to jail 30 years ago for his role in killing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Now a free man, he believes democracy will prevent Islamists from ever again taking up the gun against the state.

Zumar was a prisoner for as long as Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, was president.

His release with other leading Islamists jailed for militancy is a sign of dramatic change in Egypt in the five weeks since Mubarak was swept from power by mass protests.

Zumar, 64, was a founding member of the Islamic Jihad group which gunned down Sadat during a military parade in 1981. He was released along with his cousin, Tarek al-Zumar, who had also spent three decades in jail on similar charges.

“The revolution created a new mechanism: the mechanism of strong, peaceful protests,” said Zumar, released on March 12 and one of the political prisoners who owes his freedom to the peaceful revolt against Mubarak.

“Public squares around the Arab world are ready to receive millions who can stop any ruler and expose him,” added Zumar in an interview in his home village of Nahia on the rural outskirts of Cairo.

I hope, I wonder if western governments will have learned the same lesson. Will they continue to support despots in the name of profit and industry – or will they finally admit that a nation with mechanisms in place for all sides of discourse to meet the public, a nation, with an honest chance at success offers a better, safer future for all?

To many Egyptians, Zumar’s name evokes a violent chapter in the history of a country that has been an incubator for Islamist militancy.

His release has alarmed those concerned by the Islamists’ move to the heart of public life in the new Egypt, where groups including the Muslim Brotherhood are making the most of new freedoms to organize and speak out…

“The climate for armed action is finished and the main reason is the atmosphere of freedom we are now establishing,” said Tarek al-Zumar, this week – still a leading figure in the Gama’a al-Islamiya…

“Our concern in this period is to anchor the basis of a just political system which guarantees freedoms and the state of law,” said Tarek al-Zumar, who studied for a law doctorate while in prison.

“The project of establishing the Islamic state as a political model will be determined by the ballot box … and the thing that will determine its continuation in power is the choice of the people,” he said.

RTFA. A piece of history ignored by the West. A product of the time when nothing was more important than protecting the safe flow of oil to American and European industry.

That’s changed. Uh, hasn’t it?

“Whatever the decision, it will be too late”

The Gaddafi regime is taunting the West over its failure to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and said it would “finish the job” of defeating the insurrection against its rule by Friday.

As Col Muammar Gaddafi’s troops advanced towards the rebel capital, Benghazi, Saif al-Islam, his son, told “traitors and mercenaries” to flee the country or face the consequences…

Asked about continuing British and French attempts to persuade the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone, he answered: “Military operations are over. Within 48 hours everything will be finished. Our forces are almost in Benghazi. Whatever the decision, it will be too late.”

The failure on Tuesday by the G8 group of nations to agree military intervention in Libya is said to have “perplexed” Downing Street. An immediate decision was opposed by China and Russia but even the United States failed to come out in support of the idea.

The White House is said to be exploring “other options”, such as using sequestered Libyan assets to fund the opposition. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said she was hopeful the UN Security Council would take a vote on a Libya resolution no later than Thursday.

But Bernard Jenkin, a senior Tory MP, said: “Where are the Americans? We are now in a new, entirely new situation. We have premised our defence and foreign policy for the last 60 years on the principle that if there is an international crisis involving our national interest the Americans would see that as involving their national interests.

“That is not the case under President Obama. He has been dithering and vacillating, his administration is divided and there is considerable concern on the other side of the Atlantic about what the United States should be doing.”

The Gaddafi family meanwhile repeated claims that they had funded the electoral campaign of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. “We funded it and we have all the details and are ready to reveal everything,” Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said in his interview, with Euronews.

“The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given assistance so that he could help them…”

A well-placed government source in Tripoli told The Daily Telegraph it was “common knowledge” that the Gaddafi family had funded Mr Sarkozy “for years”…

The Gaddafi claims were all strenuously denied by President Sarkozy’s office.

I won’t roll through all the contradictions of American politics, the demands of corporate concerns and a public that, frankly, is fed up in general with war as an instrument of foreign policy. Would I have cried crocodile tears over swift, instant air strikes taking out Gaddafi’s air force and tanks right from Day One of the uprising. Hell, no.

Exactly the opposite of the crap invasions of George W. Bush – still dragging on mercilessly under the aegis of Barack Obama years later.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood will apply to become a political party…

The Brotherhood “envisions the establishment of a democratic, civil state that draws on universal measures of freedom and justice, with central Islamic values serving all Egyptians regardless of colour, creed, political trend or religion,” it said in the statement.

Although officially illegal, the Muslim Brotherhood is regarded as one of the most organized groups in Egypt.
It has said it does not plan to run a candidate for president when elections are held to replace Hosni Mubarak, who resigned on Friday.

This drags out all the bogeymen feared by the range of Blue Dog Democowards to KoolAid Party Bigots and old-fashioned haters of democracy in power in the Republican Party.

Americans have a special talent for embracing a sound political philosophy while doing everything they can to defeat it at home – and prevent it abroad. Right now, with a tentative schedule of transition from military to civilian government by August in Egypt – and elections in September – we may as well settle down for weeks and months of panicstricken pundits calling for our favorite Israeli dogs of war to bomb Egypt “back into the Stone Age”.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt resigned his post and turned over all power to the military on Friday, ending his nearly 30 years of autocratic rule and bowing to a historic popular uprising that has transformed politics in Egypt and around the Arab world…

The streets of Cairo exploded in shouts of “God is Great” moments after Mr. Mubarak’s vice president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, announced during evening prayers that Mr. Mubarak had passed all authority to a council of military leaders…

Even before he had finished speaking, protesters began hugging and cheering, shouting “Egypt is free!” and “You’re an Egyptian, lift your head”…

The departure of the 82-year-old Mr. Mubarak, at least initially to his coastal resort home in Sharm el-Sheik, was a pivotal turn in a three-week revolt that has upended one of the Arab’s world’s most enduring dictatorships. The popular protest, peaceful and resilient despite numerous effort by Mr. Mubarak’s legendary security apparatus to suppress it, ultimately deposed an ally of the United States who has been instrumental in implementing American policy in the region for decades…

Shortly before the announcement of Mr. Mubarak’s departure, the military issued a communiqué pledging to carry out a variety of constitutional reforms in a statement remarkable for its commanding tone. The military’s statement alluded to the delegation of power to Mr. Suleiman and it suggested that the military would supervise implementation of the reforms…

State radio reported that Naguib Sawiris, a wealthy and widely respected businessman, has agreed to act as a mediator between the opposition and the authorities in carrying through the political reforms, a development that was cheered by protesters.

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