In just a few days the most important US elections for decades will be held. Never has the US election commanded such worldwide interest before, and there's a simple reason why.

Never before has there been an America so isolated, so powerful and so arrogant that it has ridden roughshod over world opinion, invaded a sovereign nation on an idle, idealistic and ignorant whim and increased the danger of worldwide terrorism and nuclear proliferation in states such as Iran and North Korea. It has tortured innocent people, incarcerated innocent people for years without legal representation or prosecution. It has flouted international law, abused the Geneva convention and misled its own citizens over the reasons and necessity for invading Iraq.

'The US is an iconography of torture, cruelty and degradation. The war mentality the government has adopted has not been matched with a commitment to the laws of war and it has discarded fundamental human rights principals along the way' [Amnesty International]

And what are the choices? There is a Bush, faith-based I am infallible and can make no mistakes incumbent administration and the Kerry doublespeak apparatchik who seems to obfusticate every issue with tortured sentences that leave you even more confused after listening than before. Kerry tries to please everyone, and is in danger of pleasing no-one. Bush believes that God guides him.

Neither candidate has outlined a solid exit strategy for the Iraq fiasco. Neither have explained how they intend to pay for their programs (they can't), both have stooped to gross distortions at best and lies at worst.

Is this the best that the world’s most powerful, can-do country has to offer?

Kerry or Bush? Is there no better statesman, leader, visionary for these troubled times than a dour plodder or a God-bothering fantasist?Â

What has happened to America?

One has to go back to last election when the result was decided by lawyers. This is hardly democracy at work. People eligible to vote were turned away; defective felon lists, hanging chads and so on, when the results were dependent on a few hundred votes these electoral process faults allowed the wrong president to be ‘lawyered’ into office. Bush was the first president to be elected into office without the popular vote since the 1880s. But things have changed since the 2000 election. Or have they? There is still systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters in Florida, unreliable touch-screen voting machines, no audit trail to disprove potential allegations of 'hacking' or fraud. Reports out of Nevada and Oregon indicate that Voters Outreach of America, a company paid to register voters for the Republican party, systematically destroyed those respondents that were filled out by Democrats - when they turn up to the polling booths they will find themselves unregistered.

Only 51.3% of the electorate actually voted in 2000. Absentee voters have to mark their party affiliations on ballot papers and envelopes - why? With partisan workers from both sides involved in registration, counting and so forth, there is a clear danger of votes being deliberately 'binned' for purely partisan reasons. The Democrats and Republicans have some 20,000 lawyers between them ready and raring to go, all strategically placed within an hour of key states where the vote could go either way. Spurious and downright daft lawsuits have been filed, one of which argued that the weight of the voter registration form was too heavy. The UN are to send a delegation to ensure that the elections are free and fair, and ironically include an Albanian from that bastion of democracy delegate to monitor the process. How has it come to this?

As mentioned earlier, in the last elections only something like 51% of people bothered to vote at all. Many states are 'sewn up' and it appears that only a handful of 'key' states determine the fate of not just the US, but these days the rest of the world. The 'in the bag states' are fed token scraps to ensure their loyalty but those people in the safe states that are against the status quo are effectively disenfranchised. They know this, they aren't stupid, so they don't bother to vote.

In the 1992 election, Ross Perot garnered 20% of the popular vote and yet failed to win a single state. There are no 3rd party members or independents in Congress. The US election is a 2 horse race. Yet 33% of the US electorate is independent, loyal to neither Republicans or Democrats and have no realistic choice in this and prior elections. 65% of Americans would consider voting for a realistic 3rd party candidate in this election. The prohibitive cost of running for President prevents the grass-roots activist from attaining the highest American office: $120 million has been spent alone in the first 2 weeks of October alone. Special interest groups including unions, corporations, religeous groups, vested interest groups such as the NRA for example dominate the elections. These vested interest groups warp and pollute the manifestos of both parties who need the oxygen of their funds to compete with one another.

And what a foul competition it is. The debate over policy is forgotten as both parties seek to cover the other candidate in dirt to the disgust of the rest of the world looking anxiously in. This so-called election is nothing more than a propaganda exercise by both parties, distorting facts, misrepresenting truths and in short being anything other than democratic.

Only six democracies in the world have a 2 party system, if this election is once again decided by lawyers rather than at the ballot box, it will be a disaster for the US both internally and externally. Internally, even more people will be alienated from the idea of voting empowerment, a violent reaction is not too far fetched, externally, those countries that look to the US as a democratic ideal will turn their backs in disgust and shun this wicked farce.

It's time to reform.

This is already happening. In Carolina, new legislation that may yet be challenged as unconstitutional, is planning to allocate proportionally the votes of its constituents. Carolina will be the first state to split its electoral college to reflect the votes of its electors. Bush may win 5/9, Kerry 4/9 accordingly, every other state is awarded the full electoral college to the person with the most votes.

It's time that independent citizens, and there are plenty of them out there manned the registration offices and polling booths, time to demand a specific code of conduct from those working the election process, to bring it up to international standards. Make every vote count. Make every vote everywhere in the country effective and powerful. It's time to wrest democracy away from the elite; the rich, the powerful, the vested interest groups and put it back the hands of those in which it belongs. The good, and by damn they are good, citizens of the United States of America.

yechydda,Â