Canadian, Eh?

I was thinking, about the time of the elections here, that I'd seen better-run elections in some eastern European countries not best known for their records on human rights and free speech. Now it seems those thoughts were justified. I quote:

"International monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures fell short in many ways of the best global practices. The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system..."

[see the complete article this is quoted from here]

Yes, folks, the whole damn circus is still in town, with all kinds of evidence^* that the election was rigged: electronic voting machines that gave no printed paper to the voters to confirm their votes with a paper trail, ran code that was not made available to independent experts for checking, were wide-open to hacking (one report said that a hacker demonstrated getting into a machine and altering votes in less than a minute), and suggestions that they may have actually registered votes incorrectly in front of the voters' very eyes... exit polls at wide variance with the official returns, but strangely only in swing states and marginals... intimidation of voters... the list goes on.

My own opinion is that ultimately The Truth Will Out and that if it turns out that the Bush misadministration did indeed engineer their "victory" they will be forced to pay.

In the meantime my advice for any American planning a trip abroad is to pretend to be Canadian. And in case you think I'm joking, check this out. A firm in Albuquerque, NM ("T-shirtKing.com") is selling "Go Canadian" packages including T-shirt, lapel badge, patch and a guidebook with handy facts about Canada, in case you get questioned. For example, on the subject of sports the guide suggests: "This is easy to remember. There is only one real sport in Canada and it is called hockey. Regardless of any trivia question, the answer is 'Wayne Gretzky.'"

I think I need to design a "Go British" package for Americans who want to go to Canada...

^* - Note: "evidence" and "proof" are two different things. Just so we're clear.