Election Fraud at Home and Abroad: Hanging Chads and "Hanging Chador"

The sad events in Iran continue to trouble the world. I admire the brave folk who have taken to the streets there in the last 10 days to protest what appears to be election fraud, but I think it’s also important to recognize that elections have been stolen in countries whose experience with democracy is supposed to be much longer and stronger.

I am referring, of course, to the US presidential election of 2000, where “hanging chads” and systematic intimidation of potential voters made the difference between defeat and victory for George W. Bush.

The cover of the June 29 New Yorker makes a sly reference to that fiasco. A young woman in green hidjab is examining a punch-card ballot. “Hanging chador” it’s called.

Let those without sin cast the first stones. And where were the mass demonstrations in the US eight and a half years ago?