Some aspects of the American political system can seem opaque and mysterious to the outsider. In particular, the Constitution, which British journalists regularly confuse with the Declaration of Independence, is calibrated so as to correct the arithmetical simplicities of an undifferentiated popular will. The Presidential election of 2000 introduced the world not only to the vagaries of the franchise in Florida, user-unfriendly butterfly ballots, and the arcana of chad - hanging, dimpled, pregnant and penetrated - but also to the constitutionally mandated authority of the Electoral College. Shadowy and spectral in its operations, the College proved decisive in the face of a narrow, but clear, national majority for the losing candidate. More recently, the State of California has presented another challenge to the straightforwardness of democracy as the rest of the world imagines it, with the proposal to recall an elected governor in possession of an unambiguous and unexpired democratic mandate.

LRB 25 September 2003 | PDF Download