Laughing Stock

"Now we find out that all the recent American elections,
done with the same confusing methods and obsolete mechanisms
as this last one are under suspicion—and that the suffrage,
after all, was never direct. Nothing is serious anymore,
there's nothing we can trust."

Alessandra Dalevi

Like the rest of the world, Brazilians had a raucous and a mirthful time following the post-election fiasco conducted by its northern neighbors in the United States of America. Besides repeating jokes told around the world Brazilians had a chance to deal with their own inferiority complex and for a change felt superior to the Americans.

TSE's (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral—Electoral Supreme Tribunal) Information Secretary, Paulo César Camarão, called the American model for voting archaic. "The U.S. electronic ballot box is the size of a refrigerator," he said, amused. "Our system, besides being uniform across the country, is also inviolable, fraud proof, and we are able to announce the results faster." We can almost see him laughing while saying this. After all, Brazil has just had national elections in which every vote—around 110 million of them—was cast electronically in a computer terminal a little bigger than a shoebox, which showed the pictures of the candidates so voters could confirm he or she was the correct person before casting their votes. In less than six hours (5 hours and 42 minutes to be precise) after the end of the elections the TSE already had the official results from 325,000 ballot boxes throughout the nation. For the president of TSE, minister Néri da Silveira, it's amazing that the U.S. doesn't have a national roster of voters and its system has no antifraud security.

Forums on the Internet opened their pages so people could talk about the U.S. election. Hundreds of messages were posted at the Globo portal. "Do you see what happens when you are outdated technologically?," asked Celso Poletto (veneza@naves.com.br). "Not only in elections but also in their banking system Americans are behind compared to Brazilians. Contrary to what happens in the U.S., the Finance Ministry, for example, accepts tax returns via the Internet." Lúcia Maria de Lima (lucialima8@ig.com.br) wrote that Brazilians could teach something to Americans regarding voting: "When the subject is elections the U.S. is a Third World country. It's unacceptable that a country that exercises its power over the world, that goes to space, that keeps secrets, bungles it so terribly when it's time to elect the planet's 'most powerful' man."

Some people were mad to see their fellow Brazilians so worried with what was happening up north. "I think this discussion is a total waste of time," wrote Eric Souza dos Santos (orubronegro@bol.com.br). "I'd like to know if these two American citizens are going to be elected president of the world or of a single country? I can't understand why Brazilians are so worried with an election in which whoever wins will not change at all the imperialistic relation of the U.S. towards the rest of the underdeveloped world. Do you think they discuss the fights between our Rio Governor Garotinho with mayor César Maia? Or the fights between senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães and President Fernando Henrique Cardoso? They don't even know what the capital of Brazil is. Stop this buffoonery and come back to reality. Beware Uncle Sam."

Elói Teixeira (eloi_vicente@hotmail.com) says that Brazilians should pity the American people for having such an outdated way of voting and invites Brazilians to be solidarity: "Besides the huge fiasco of showing the rest of the world an election in which the results came so late and which was subject to mistakes and fraud, there is something even worse: the indirect election, which can elevate to the presidency a candidate who the majority has not elected. In face of all of this, we Brazilians, who recently got rid of a regime of oppression, have to offer our solidarity to the American people. Let's lend them our slogans: "The people united, will never be defeated! Democracy in the USA! Direct (elections) now!""

For Christiana Bueno (christianabueno@ig.com.br) the American embarrassment and humiliation is a good lesson for the country: "They are finally tasting what it is to be underdeveloped with their primitive system of elections. We should send a committee of observers and share with them our technology in electronic ballot boxes, which is perfect for the exercise of a true and fair popular election by direct vote." And Ismenia Albuquerque (ismenia_albuquerque@hotmail.com) went a little further: "The mask has fallen. The U.S. has shown what in fact it is: a fraud." "The problem is that Americans are too dumb," concluded Ronaldo Fontoura (fontoura.voy@terra.com.br).

Echoing the feeling of other quarters, Mauro Simões (divcil@rffsa.gov.br) made fun of the U.S.: "Due do our interests in that country, I think Brazil should send observers to follow the ballot counting. Is this a new idea or have I heard it before in a reversed way?" To which Wilmor Henrique (whenriqu@brasilnet.net) added: "The U.S. is having the election it deserves. This way Americans will learn they are not superior to anything or anyone. They are always interfering in questions of other countries but are unable to hold an election with openness and competence. Don't you think there ought to be an international intervention in the American elections? Didn't it happen in Peru, Venezuela…?"

Concurring with many of these opinions and pointing to the good example of Brazil, The New York Times wrote in its op-ed page on November 24: "One very important lesson of the 2000 presidential election, regardless of its outcome, is already clear—you get what you pay for when it comes to tabulating ballots. America's unwillingness to invest in a reliable, up-to-date system for casting and counting votes has helped produce the chaos that now clouds the outcome of the presidential election.

"Brazil, a country larger than the continental United States, held the first national election conducted entirely on an A.T.M. system, with resounding success. More than 100 million people voted on 186,000 machines. Alas, in America, the land of rapid technological change, the act of voting remains a nostalgic one. In New York, we use the same machines our grandparents did, and a third of Americans attempt to punch out chads that were state of the art the year the Beatles appeared on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.'"

Disenchantment

Luís Fernando Veríssimo, who lived and studied in the United States and is one of the most respected writers in Brazil, couldn't resist going back again and again to the American fiasco in his daily column in the dailies O Globo (from Rio) and O Estado de S. Paulo. In one of them, after explaining the reason for the electoral college (it was created to maintain the balance between the agrarian Southern states and the North that was growing demographically) he concluded: "With the present mix-up it is even possible that the Americans may reform the Constitution and put an end to the electoral college, and the popular vote—preferably registered on trustworthy machines, as it happens in developed places like Caruaru (a little town in the backlands)—becomes decisive. And, more than 200 years afterwards, the spirit of the admirable document in which for the first time it was put on paper that common men are equal to kings, will prevail over their hypocrisies."

Veríssimo returned again to the same topic on November 15 in a piece called "Disillusion, Disillusion": "Nothing else was serious; we couldn't trust anything else but the American democracy. There it was a society that, say what they might, could give the world lessons of how an electoral system of free choice by direct suffrage works, and frequently gave. Now we find out that all the recent American elections, done with the same confusing methods and obsolete mechanisms as this last one are under suspicion—and that the suffrage, after all, was never direct. Nothing is serious anymore, there's nothing we can trust."

And when Florida had already certified the victory of Bush, Veríssimo came once again to the theme writing: "The United States should propose a UN emergency meeting to discuss sanctions against Florida, that weird place in the shape of an appendix in which the presidential elections were defrauded more shamefully than in Yugoslavia. An armed intervention by the NATO forces to end the ethnic cleansing of votes for Gore wouldn't be advisable, since there would always be the possibility of the bombs missing their target and killing Mickey Mouse, with international repercussions, but an economic blockade like the one they have against Cuba and Iraq would be justifiable. In the recent unacceptable elections in Yugoslavia the fraud was more discreet. At least the authority in charge of saying if the votes could be counted or not had not participated actively in Milosevic's campaign, as the State secretary of Florida did in Bush's campaign."

Writing at Folha de São Paulo, Ricardo Freire had a good time making fun of the U.S. in an article entitled, 'America Doesn't Know how to Vote.' "The United States might have asked for help from their technologically advanced neighbors like Brazil. We would send immediately a load of electronic ballot boxes—used ones for sure but in perfect working condition. The Quixeramobim (a funny-named village in the interior of backward Ceará state) ballot boxes for example. Our election ended and they are there, inactive, waiting for the next. This way the Palm Beach folks could vote without any mistakes. Because all they had to do was to punch a number, wait for the picture of George W. Bush or Al Gore to appear and then press the CONFIRMA key.

"To make things easier, instead of the candidates' pictures, the electronic ballot boxes loaned to the Americans could show little drawings of the running parties' symbols. If the Palm Beach voter punched the Republican candidate's number, the image of an elephant would appear. If the Palm Beach voter punched the Democrat candidate's number, the image of a little donkey would appear. I know that by now you don't believe anything I write, but I SWEAR the Republican Party symbol is an elephant, and that the Democrat Party symbol is a little donkey. A little don-key!!!!! It is obvious that a country that allows the alternating of power between little elephants and little donkeys can't really go far in life…

"How long will our brothers from the North put up with being at the technological rear end of the continent? How long will they allow their elites to shroud themselves in their own backwardness, boycotting high-end technology developed overseas? The United States cannot insist anymore in its provincialism, in the illusion that they will be able to continue immune to globalization. Fat chance. Sooner or later the free market will take care of bringing to the Americans technological innovations from the outside world. Things like direct elections, the metric system, football (soccer), sunga (short swim trunks), avocado with sugar."

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