Electile dysfunction in Georgia

Elections cannot be stolen. It’s official, so there.

But votes can be mislaid, and that’s official, too.

The small town of Kennesaw, Georgia (pop. 33,049) recently held an election for a city council post. The result was certified in favour of one candidate, but it then turned out that a memory stick containing 789 votes had not been successfully (or perhaps not in time) uploaded into the system. This turned the race into a marginal win for the runner-up. The Council re-tested the ballot scanners Saturday and began a recount Sunday. As at the time of writing (Tuesday a.m. UK time) we still don’t know the final verdict!

The position had become available because the previous incumbent resigned in protest at the reopening of a local shop selling Civil War memorabilia:

Dent Myers opened Wildman’s in 1971. It became infamous for its display of a Ku Klux Klan robe, racist collectibles, prominently displayed Confederate flag, and storefront signs such as the one that says “White History Year.”

Some non-Americans may view that country’s racial difficulties with a kind of eagerness for the apocalypse, as the Left here appeared to hope for South Africa prior to the Presidency of Nelson Mandela.

There’s a twist in human nature that wants to see others suffer in fire and blood – it’s a major, perhaps the main theme of written and cinematic fiction. Not so funny when you have to live through it. America has had enough of violent mountebanks of all kinds.

As it happens, Georgia is also awaiting the outcome of a bigger election, that for its US Senator. The contest on November 8 was so close that neither of the main candidates achieved 50% of the total, so there will be a runoff just between those two on December 6.

Both the incumbent, Raphael Warnock (Democrat) and the challenger Herschel Walker (Republican) are ‘persons of colour.’ Good luck to them both, as the US continues its progress towards harmony at home.

Now for the same, in foreign relations.