MetaFilter posts tagged with democracy and elections

X marks the spot; 700 million might

adamvasco — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 07:39:31 -0800

Between 16 April - 13 May the worlds largest democracy will go into action. Being India the logistics are mind boggling. Over 700 million eligible voters who will vote in over 700,000 polling stations for 1,055 political parties. The BBC goes on to explain what makes Indian elections special. University of Maryland has Forecasts and Analysis and Trends in Indian Election Politics has both insight and an interesting blog roll. As Indian Politics are more than usually corrupt and thuggish there is website dedicated to information about candidates with a criminal history. Sadly in spite of this great democratic exercise, repression of speech and miscarriage of justice will probably still be around for a while.

I am NOT a CROOK

hadjiboy — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:12:24 -0800

40 lie dead, as General Pervez Musharraf tries to quash the judiciary of Pakistan, before the elections (pdf) to be held this year.

Polling Place Photo Project

coudal — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 03:51:33 -0800

The Polling Place Photo Project is an experiment in citizen journalism that intends to collect photographs of every polling place in America next Tuesday.

Tiny democracies vote this week

penguin pie — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:28:46 -0800

Vote, damn you! Residents of Ascension Island have been taking part in their second ever general election, but they have been so apathetic that the returning officer gave up trying to enrol voters and just signed up all 697 of them herself.

Meanwhile, further South, it’s also election day in the Falkland Islands, complete with flying ballot boxes and a campaign in which, (rightly or wrongly), even 23 years after the conflict, many of the candidates manifestos juggle the usual municipal chit-chat that occupies a population of under 3,000 with matters of international diplomacy, such as councillors’ visits to the UN,and whether Argentina should be ignored, resisted or befriended.

Disenfranchisement

kyrademon — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 11:25:35 -0800

Elections on the US model? Now that the voting is done, questions are starting to arise . . . Sunni Moslems in Kirkuk had an exemption from the boycott of the vote. But of 38 designated polling centres in the Hawija district, only 19 actually opened, and the electoral commission had only sent 50,000 ballots to the district, even though more than 100,000 voters were on the rolls. Of course, things like that happen often in places new to voting, like Ohio. But wait, there's more! Kurdish Christians were not able to vote when balloting materials arrived inexplicably late, and Iraq's interim president said a shortage of ballots at some polling places may have kept tens of thousands from voting. There's been a lot of news about suspicious elections all over the world during the last few years. How can we restore our faith in the democratic process?

Democracy triumphs over conventional wisdom in India?

riviera — Thu, 13 May 2004 12:46:48 -0800

'In the event, it was a near-unanimous verdict for the politics of inclusiveness - economic, social and cultural - and against the rhetoric of divisiveness and xenophobia.' The 'stunning' victory of Sonia Gandhi's Congress (I) party in the world's largest democracy may force us to reconsider some of our preconceptions about India. To the headline writers in Britain and the US, it's the place that's 'stealing' jobs from the West (itself a simplification); to most Indian voters, though, the BJP's economic miracle doesn't extend beyond the major cities, serving to accentuate rather than alleviate the poverty gap. The verdict on the ground? That this is a vote against the limited capacity of globalisation to bring real change to developing economies. Some might accuse Indian voters of cutting off their noses to spite their faces, but for hundreds of millions of them, the BJP's promise of a 'Shining India' spoke of an entirely different world.