Cobama or Billary ?

“I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there”
- Maureen Reagen (daughter of R. Reagen)

Its election time in the United States again. This time its a race between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama to the top seat. Funnily enough the Republicans are counted out even before the voting takes place. Looks like the Democratic party's nomination for the Presidential seat is a sure shot. Just to re-emphasize the impression the "dumb guy" has made on the Americans.

Remembering 2000...
The elections in U.S. are generally hard fought and closely contested. The Presidential elections of 2000 contested (primarily) between Bush and Gore were certainly one of the closest in recent history with the State of Florida being the center stage. With 85 % of votes being counted in Florida, Bush had been leading over Gore by over 100,000 votes - leading the media to declare Bush as the next President. But with votes coming in from the remaining 3 heavily Democratic counties the lead dwindled to 2000 votes. The media retracted its predictions and Al Gore, who had conceded the elections to Bush, promptly took it back!


After first recount the lead came down to 500 votes - leading to cries of hand recounts and foul play. Finally the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in, ending the recounts and finally Bush's lead was declared to be 537 votes (out of 5.8 million cast). It was later found that 175,010 votes were never counted in Florida. Interestingly enough, under the recount rules originally requested by Bush, Gore would have won and vica-versa! (Source : Wikipedia)


2008 - Time for change?
The 2008 US Presidential elections are unique in many ways. This is the first election since 1958 when neither an incumbent President nor Vice-President is running for their party's nomination. This is the first time when You Tube viewers quizzed the candidates by submitting videos of their questions. First time the Americans abroad could vote online. If Hillary gets it right, she would the first woman in American history to be the President. The same goes true for Honolulu born Obama who would be the first African-American to go to the highest seat.

The Hillary Vs Obama debate is being played out on all fields - sample these You Tube videos.





So far the election has been dominated by themes of race,gender and faith with Bill Clinton saying, "As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender". He also said that voting along race-gender lines "is understandable, because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time."

Voting woes
But as far as technology goes, its back to the future this time. The voices against electronic voting machine's vulnerability to fraud received another boost when a computer science professor at Princeton published images of unattended e-voting machines on his web page.

On the "Super Tuesday" voters reported more than 1100 separate incidents of problems with E-Voting machines. This, however may seem trivial considering that almost 50 million used the machines this Tuesday. In addition there were problems of machines not booting or failing in several states. The state of California has made a decision not to use e-voting after serious flaws were found in the machines.


The Indian connection
The elections have already received a Desi tone with Obama labeling Hillary as "Sen. Clinton (D-Punjab)" or the senator from Punjab referring to the cash support from Indian-Americans to her campaign. At a recent fund-raiser, she reportedly joked, "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily." Whatever it might turn out to be, these are anxious moments for the Americans and exciting for the rest of us :)