As it stands the process seems to arouse a lot of partisan bickering and suspicion. We even had Jimmy Carter recently hinting that Gore won that contested race against Bush.

Since the U.S. – as represented by G.W.B. – sees itself as the emissary of democracy and freedom around the world, the most basic thing it should look after is it’s own democratic engine aka the election process.

To whom?

There does not need to be. If the result is essentially random 50:50 we might as well admit it. Any winner will do. All that matters is that the procedures are followed and no instability ensues.

The American system met that standard, albeit barely.

Points taken, of course.

Mine is that I don’t think there’s a voting system in Europe that’s accurate to four parts per million. (Voter registration in Germany, for instance, is based on information from the Meldeamt. Anyone who is willing to bet that there are fewer than 20 people in Germany living in a place other than where they are officially registered is invited to just send me the money directly. And that’s all that it would take to shift a German election that’s as close as the American one was in 2000.)

What lessons or responses Europeans take from the American election in 2000 says much more about them, individually, than about us.

you said : ‘My point is simply that I prefer our system. ‘

and my point is that the American system is not too bad.. it has limped along for 200 plus years..
we’ll see what Germany looks like 150 years from now..
if there are any Germans left…

Mebbe this looks childish in a 2 party system. When there are more than 2 parties you could call this coaltion formation.

“speaking of Reforms.. did you know that Reformstau was the word of the year in 1997?”

Yes. Because did almost nothing and the SPD used the Bundesrat to stop his tiny reforms.

“you German posters above are correct, the American system should be reformed.. can you please help us?”

Dunno, which Germans have said so. My point is simply that I prefer our system. For example:

“A voter in California is 3.344 times more likely to change the outcome of the election.”

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~livingst/Banzhaf/

When you like such results. GO steve GO.
Actually I dont give a **** at all.

When someone else referred to the popular vote, I guess he meant this result:

George W. Bush Republican Texas 50,460,110 47.9%
Al Gore Democratic Tennessee 51,003,926 48.4%

The Florida election may have had only a 500 vote margin (in one count or another), but there were 1000′s of ballots ruined in Florida by incompetent ballot design (2000 butterfly ballots, and 10,000+ double votes in a ballot with instructions to vote for one candidate on each page and presidental listings that ran over two pages) and 10,000′s more never cast due to intimidation and intentionally racist voter role purges. Estimates of voter suppression and mis-voting from credible sources have run as high as 1 million votes in the entire US.

2000 wasn’t a freakish year in how bad our electoral system is, it was just a freakish year in that a fantastically tight election brought attention to just how bad it usually is.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wort_des_Jahres

No, be proud, Germans, at least you are nowhere nearly as bad as the stupid Amis..
your country is in a funk and has been for seven years.. but at least you are not like the AMis!!!

you German posters above are correct, the American system should be reformed.. can you please help us?
You are so examplary when it comes to reforming. For heaven’s sake, it took an act of God to change the store opening times…

Back-of-the-envelope calculations tell me that roughly 48 million votes were cast in the German elections. For the German vote to be as close as the US election in 2000, that would be a margin of 12 votes. Does anyone want to be that there are not 12 improper votes in Germany? More to the point, does anyone want to bet that if both major parties applied all of their resources to finding 12 questionable ballots that they could not be found?

For other European countries, the margin is even slimmer. A similarly close election in Sweden, for example, would have a difference of less than two voters.

I’m just sayin’.