It was the year 2001. On July 11, a
terrorist attack
struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
It's hard to say which result
was the more embarrassing, but the
45.6% voter turnout was the least ever for a presidential election. In
retrospect,
the result of the election should have been expected.
Bush had won the
election by a margin of just 51.7% to 47.3%. The other
Republican candidate for president was running for the same office in a
different state.
Within a week of the attacks, a
presidential
election was held and the Clinton
administration collapsed.
But the
United States Census of 2000 revealed a different America.
There were fewer people, but Americans living in poverty and with little
economic resources had doubled. Consequently,
the
Census Bureau was forced to issue a new census.
A second
presidential election followed, but the
polls were telling a different story. Republican
George W. Bush won the election by
49.4% of the vote to his opponent's 47.2%.
This time the
results were even worse.
Even as Bush was about to become president of the United States, the
turnout was the lowest
in decades. Despite
the fact that
Bush had lost the popular vote to his opponent by
52.9% to 47.1%, the
number of voters is estimated
to have been around 45.6%.
It turns out that the
low turnout was not limited to Bush. The
same was true of the other Republican candidate.
In
contrast, the only Democratic candidate to win the election without
a majority of the votes was
Gore.
So on the eve
of the election, a new President, a war in Afghanistan, and the
election of 2001 should have been about the United
States. Instead, the country
was taken up with what the US
electoral system meant.