60 percent of the vote in Nicaragua has been counted now, but it is still uncertain that Sandinista Manuel Ortega will recapture the presidency. Ortega leads in the election currently has 38 percent of the counted vote, compared to Eduardo Montealegre’s 30 percent of the vote. However, if Ortega does not maintain a 5 percentage point lead over his nearest rival and get at least 35 percent of the vote, there will be a second, run-off election in December.
The vote count won’t be done for a while longer, but this much can be said of Nicaragua’s elections this year: They appear to have been free and fair. Can the same be said of the 2006 elections in the United States, where voting inequities, hackable electronic machines with no paper record of votes, and intimidation of voters is the rule? The United States has so many problems with its multiple systems of elections that it would not qualify to receive election observers, as Nicaragua has done.
The United States is the wealthiest nation in the Western hemisphere. Nicaragua is the poorest. It ought to be a source of national shame for the United States that Nicaragua’s system of elections is superior to our own.
