BNP ballot box worries

We suppose when the vast majority of people hate you and everything you stand for - as is, thankfully, still the case for the extreme right-wing British National Party - it's easy to slip into a paranoid persecution complex. Having said that, paranoia is not always an imagined fear, of course. In the BNP's case their worries are very real and leader Nick Griffin knows it - he wouldn't last five minutes on Britain's streets without his security and that's why a phalanx of large, stocky men accompany him wherever he goes. Precisely why the vitriol spat at him from all quarters isn't enough to make him realise that his particular brand of hate-fuelled politics is in direct opposition to everything the British electorate hold dear is a mystery. Maybe he took one too many punches to the head whilst boxing at Cambridge, or maybe he's just a nasty fascist scumbag who is so desperate for any sort of power he carries on in blissful ignorance.

"We know it happens. We just can't prove it," says BNP spokesman John Walker, refusing to admit the reason the BNP don't get many votes is because they're a bunch of Nazi thugs and anyone with any sense hates them.

News came last week that Nick and his Nazis are so concerned that the British establishment and Labour Party will scupper their chances of electoral success (they're forgetting that British values and revulsion at racist politics will do that) that they've invoked the Ballot Act of 1872 which gives candidates the right to place their own seals on ballot boxes in addition to the official ones in order to prevent shadowy figures from opening them up and stealing votes for parties with which they disagree.

John Walker, a BNP spokesman, says that vote tampering has taken place in the past. "We know it happens. We just can't prove it," he claims, which rather reminds us of an LSD casualty who thinks aliens are trying to abduct them - they can't see that the reason they can't prove it is because it's not really happening.

Erm, are you forgetting something here, BNP guys and gals? We're the democrats - we believe in free elections and all that. We don't do vote rigging like you fascists. Anyway, we don't have to - the British people enjoy civil freedoms and have a long history of tolerance and multiculturalism, which means you'll never get the power you crave. For that reason, BNP seals on ballot boxes are a good thing - come the General Election, when you yet again fail to get an MP, you won't be able to pretend it's due to fraud. When that happens, you'll hopefully finally get the message and crawl back under your stones.

US politician fails election by one vote - his own

Here at Acid Rabbi, we pride ourselves on having as much awareness of what's going on in the world of American politics as the average American has in the politics of the rest of the world. None, in other words.

But this one can't be ignored...

Micheal Heagerty - probably no longer grinning.
Image nicked from www.syracuse.ny.us, used without permission.

Michael Heagerty, the Common Councillor of Syracuse (no, we have no idea what a common councillor is or does either), needed a minimum of 335 signatures in his petition to run for re-election to the Democrat Party. Not very many, is it? He had 20 volunteers helping him and between them they managed to collect a more-than-sufficient 398 names - not bad. But then it all went badly wrong.

Heagerty's Republican opponent, Matt Rayo, challenged the petition because he was of the opinion that some of the signatures might be invalid. Officials from the County Board of Elections found this was indeed the case and declared 64 of them to be no good. Bad luck for Mike - that left him just one signature short. So near and yet so far.

The thing is, it got even worse. The following day, a reporter phoned him enquiring why he hadn't signed his own petition. "I didn't sign my own petition? You've got to be kidding me," he said, doubtless smashing his own head into the nearest wall as the words left his mouth.