The Brits...No Diebold!

Britain's opposition Conservatives got more votes than either Labour or the Liberal Democrats in the UK's parliamentary elections yesterday, although those two left-wing parties together got well over half of all votes cast, leading to speculation that Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg will lead his party to form a ruling coalition with Labour's Gordon Brown, keeping Brown in the position of Prime Minister.

During the campaign, Clegg had advocated changing Britain's electoral system from one where local people vote for the local party that will present its candidate to Parliament, to a more standard proportional representation system where local votes are replaced with a nationwide vote, with each party getting a number of seats in parliament in proportion to the percentage of the national vote it got.

Clegg also said that he'd give whichever party got the most votes would be the first he'd work with, and right after the election results were in, he reached out to the Conservative's David Cameron implying that if Cameron would embrace his proportional representation changes, he'd support Cameron for Prime Minister.

The Conservatives, however, don't support these changes - and neither does Labour. Which will make the next few months very interesting as kingmaker Clegg keeps pushing for this.

The entire nationwide vote, by the way, was done on paper. No voting machines in the United Kingdom. No Diebold. No Kathleen Harrises or Ken Blackwell.

And television advertisements for candidates or parties are banned in the UK, so the election lasted only a few weeks and very little money was spent on it.

We could learn some lessons from the Brits.

ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World

Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.

Thom's Blog Is On the Move

Hello All

Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.

Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.