The elephants are still fighting

Now we are in the post-election phase. Losing candidates are busy complaining about the automation machines, challenging results, demanding recounts , accusing the winners of corrupt tactics, and filing lawsuits. The top two vice-presidential candidates have been neck and neck with only a few thousand vote difference so that has been mildly interesting. Both have been very civil about the whole thing. They haven't yet declared a winner but are promising to do so soon.

What's been interesting is the local mayoral race. The Daughter won 65% of the vote for mayor and the incumbant Mayor won 80% of the vote for vice-mayor, or rather, Vice-Mayor. The election committee has long ago declared them the winners. But somehow the Opponent continues to fuss. Rumor has it that he threw huge amounts of money into winning this election but after all he didn't and he can't believe it. I guess he doesn't yet understand the perfidy of people.

He is the one who demanded that the election committee take over the city during elections lest the emcumbant Mayor cheat. The Mayor agreed and so the election committee has been in charge of the city since a couple days before the election until now. Now he is filing a suit accusing the Mayor's party of having 17,000 dead people vote and 40,000 zombie voters (people registered in more than one precinct), and of other irregularities. (Not that 57,000 votes would have changed the election results anyway.) Meanwhile the current Mayor wisely noted that the suit should actually be filed against the election commission, not him as they are the ones who were in control of the city and the election. The head of the election committee is annoyed and says that that was not possible, that THEY were in control and were very strict and weeded out people registered in more than one place. The new mayor-elect, Daughter, said she was expecting about a thousand suits from Opponent. So this is just number 1 with 999 to go. But even frivolous lawsuits have to go through the courts and takes the time and money of the accused.

This has been an interesting election. Apparently many if not most politicians are lawyers who can spend all their spare time throwing legal challenges at each other. I also learned that these elections are deadly serious affairs, and the power struggle is awseome. Reminds me of the African proverb - when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. It may make for amusing news stories, but you sure don't want to get involved!