Mediocre Fred's Mediocre Blog (Ret.)

We Bring You This Brief Interruption...

Today's Musical Selection: "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" by Warren Zevon

Hi, everybody! I'm not officially back from sabbatical, but I wanted to point out the latest example of Fun With the Electoral System. This edition comes to us from our wacky comrades over in the Ukraine.

A brief recap for those who head straight for the sports section when they pick up the paper: a little while back, the Ukraine held an election for president, or tried to. One candidate was the incumbent Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovich. This is a hard name to spell, so we'll call him "Big Vic." Big Vic had the backing of Moscow and Russian president Josef Stalin. Whoops! I meant Vladimir Putin. Getting hard to tell those two apart sometimes, except one's dead. I'm pretty sure it's Stalin. But anyway. The other candidate was a reformer named Viktor Yushchenko. This is also a hard name to spell, so we'll call him "Lumpy." Lumpy ran a strong campaign, and people seemed ready for a change, and so they went to the polls and made him president.

That's what everyone thought, anyway. But lo and behold, once the vote totals were revealed, Big Vic was discovered to have won. So Big Vic and Putin slapped their knees and had a good chuckle. "Boy, those exit polls are really something, aren't they?" they said. Then they ordered another round of potato vodkas, or whatever it is Russians do when they celebrate things.

But Lumpy's supporters charged election fraud. It seemed awfully fishy to them that their guy was presumed to be the landslide winner, and suddenly the vote total showed that he lost. The new "Dieboldovich" electronic voting machines used in some precincts were heavily cricized. And they were particularly suspicious when they saw someone who looked an awful lot like Katherine Harris counting the ballots. Also, Lumpy's friends noticed that he didn't seem himself. He looked kind of blotchy and out of it. Big Vic suggested that his opponent was probably just tired from the grueling campaign and offered to send him on a nice vacation in sunny Siberia. But Lumpy suspected he'd been poisoned. Everyone had a good laugh over this. "Poisoned! Ho ho ho! Don't be silly, Lumpy. Who would do something crazy like that?" Only he went to a doctor and it turned out that, well, he had been poisoned. Big Vic shook his head and said, "Boy, poisoned, huh? Tough break, kid. Got to stay away from that bathtub vodka... it'll get you every time."

In light of all the suspicious goings-on, the Ukrainians went ahead and held themselves a second election. (Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, the seed of an idea planted itself in Dino Rossi's mind.) In this second election, Lumpy won handily. Imagine that. So he and his friends, who call themselves the Orange Revolution (which has nothing to do, so far as I know, with DC Councilman Vincent Orange, Agent Orange, Orange County, The Los Angeles Angels of California in Anaheim or the Nearby Vicinity, or the Denver Broncos) began whooping it up and making plans for their inauguration.

Big Vic, statesman that he is, took his loss in stride. He congratulated Lumpy and said that he was committed to obeying the will of the people. So committed to obeying the will of the people, in fact, that he refused to leave office until he was absolutely sure that the people really wanted him to go. After all, he mused, is a man who's been poisoned really fit to hold office?

Now, Lumpy was certified the winner back on Monday. But due to a wacky clause in Ukrainian electoral law, the result is not official until it's published in an official newspaper. (And you thought the Electoral College was strange.) The newspaper, apparently, is holding back until Big Vic has a chance to appeal the result in court, since as we know from America's example, no election is final until everybody's up to their eyeballs in legal bills. And twice now Big Vic has sworn up and down that he's ready to get on with the filing of the appeal, and twice his legal firm, Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, has discovered at the end of the day that they left a split infinitive in the pleading, or something, and they they have to go back and write the whole thing over, which takes a long time, because apparently they write all their appeals on sheepskin with a quill pen. Big Vic swears that they'll have that appeal filed this time tomorrow for sure, although there are already rumblings from his legal team that there are some dangling modifiers in there, and that won't do.

Meanwhile, Lumpy and his friends are itchy to get on with the governing. They accuse Big Vic of trying to thwart the will of the people, and they're accusing Big Vic's staff of taking the opportunity to steal as much as possible from the governing palace. (Hey, since when did Big Vic hire staffers from the Clinton Administration?)

Big Vic insists that he's not trying to thwart anything, and that he knows he lost. Yes, he knows. He is "only trying to protect Ukrainians' rights." (Hey, he and Dino Rossi are reading from the same hymnal! Wonder when Big Vic will insist on "making sure every vote is counted"?)

Anyway, Big Vic has until Monday to get his appeal in, and after that it doesn't matter if the dog ate his torts, he's toast. Presumably. I'll bet wily old Big Vic has a couple tricks up his sleeve. He still has his friend Putin, and ol' Vladdie is known to carry a big stick, besides which he's not too picky about pesky nuances like civil liberties. So I predict more fun and excitement yet to come.

Those crazy Ukrainians. They should take a tip from us. Look at Washington State... they had a close, disputed election, and yet they were still able to seat the presumed winner, Christine Gregoire, yesterday. Of course, polls show that a majority of Washington voters want a new election. And there's always the possibility that Rossi will win a court case somewhere up the line, and Gregoire could be unceremoniously yanked out of office in a couple months. But those are the risks you run in a democracy.

My point, I guess, is this: when it comes to arguing over close elections, we Americans have got it down to a science. Those bumbling amateurs in the Ukraine should take a lesson from us, the shining beacon of democracy. Don't you think?

Anyway, back to my fishing hole. I plan to resurface sometime next week. See you then!

Posted by Fred at January 13, 2005 11:05 PM