Assad Abu Khalil — The West & Gulf Couldn’t Sway These Lebanese Elections

Excellent backgrounder. It's mostly about the intricacies of the Lebanese voting system and Lebanese politics, but this is an interesting aside on the US showing that "democratic elections" are not so democratic in the developed world as well as the emerging world.

In the U.S., there is still a clear agenda to suppress wide political participation. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world which holds the vote on a working day—and in the winter where much of the East coast is buried under rain and snow. Furthermore, the U.S. requires voter registration, when most democracies don’t. The low voter turnout in the U.S. is by design, and not by default. If the U.S. were to adopt a proportional representation system—which both parties won’t allow because they enjoy holding the exclusive monopoly over political representation—voter turnout would increase. Most world democracies have—at least partially or at some level—adopted proportional representation.

Incidentally, the West "lost" the recent election in Iraq, too.

Of course, the West lost the recent election in Russia, too, but that was a foregone conclusion with the level of support for Putin going in. The only thing is question was the margin of victory and what percentage of the vote other parties would get. Not that the US didn't try to influence the Russian election, it did, as documented in a recent official report in Russia recently linked to here.

Meanwhile we are still being bombarded with faux outrage over the supposed influence of Russia on the 2016 election from "the Resistance."

Consortium News
The West & Gulf Couldn’t Sway These Lebanese Elections
Assad Abu Khalil | Professor of Political Science, California State University, Stanislaus