Today, I saw a movie 窶廚all it Democracy,窶� that deals with the problems which actually happened in the last presidential election. In Florida, the votes weren窶冲 counted correctly, and as a result of the recount, different nominee was elected, in addition, the federal Supreme Court ruled it legitimate. People have a doubt about the decision, and when counting the votes, some seemed to be not counted, after all, it was recounted, as a result, the other president was elected, who was George. W. Bush. It was completely unthinkable story.

In this movie, the discussions were held about a kind of 窶忖nusual窶� issues. It is natural that every vote will be counted correctly. But, people talking about the voting system, voting machines, discrimination against race, instead of the political issues which ordinary is regarded as important. I doubted why does such a ridiculous accident happen?

The first problem was the complicated voting card system. In some states, the punching card is still used, but it is very confusing. It is sometimes very difficult to tell which candidate the one vote. It is really easily to lead people to misunderstanding. But, the voting system is not an important problem in Japan. I have voted for three times so far. In Japanese election, we write the name of the candidate by handwriting. In this system, actually some doubtful votes will be seen, because of the bad handwriting, and it makes the officer confused, but it, in many cases, doesn窶冲 matter. This is because the gap between the candidates is obvious. If all the doubtful or unclear votes would be counted, it doesn窶冲 influence the result of the election. That窶冱 why this problem looks ridiculous for me.

The second problem was the discrimination against race. It is also ridiculous, but serious; some black American voters were refused to vote in Florida. In the federal law, people who have a criminal record at some extent don窶冲 have a right to vote, but in Florida, this rule was applied in an inappropriate way. The attention that tells people he/she doesn窶冲 have a right sent many people even those who have a right, and in addition, most of them were black Americans. In the movie, this situation was described in comparison to the civil rights act. Black Americans managed to get the voting right as a result of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, but the situation was like before then. It is obviously the discrimination against race. One of the reasons that black Americans votes were unfavorable is that most of them supported the Democrats. Floridian Republican, and the governor is brother of the president, doesn窶冲 like it, and that窶冱 made them recount the votes. Anyway, it is unbelievably anachronism discussion.

In the reflection of these problems, the absentee ballots became really popular in all over the states. The number of people using the absentee ballots is increasing. Many people recognize the problems that happened in the last election, and don窶冲 want to repeat the 窶彷ault窶� again. But in Iowa, some of absentee ballots were rejected because of the defect of the application. I have no idea if the problem would influence the result of the election, because the number of the votes those were rejected was not large, 400 to 600 hundreds voters. Of course I know the importance of this problem, it is not the problem of the number of the people, but the problem of the system.

As I talked in this diary in the past, the most important, and serious problem is the vote rate. In the United States, it is also not high; about 40 to 50 percent. If it were much higher, at least 60 percent, it won窶冲 cause any problems, because the gap will be desperate. Nobody can claim the result. It is not necessary to recount the votes. It should be the ideal of the democracy.