The Grauniad newspaper has, over the last few weeks, been running a feature whereby its British readers write to American voters in Clark County, Ohio, to try and influence the result of the Election next Tuesday.
They launched the campaign as follows:
…At the core of it is a unique scheme to match individual Guardian readers to individual American voters, giving you the opportunity to write a personal letter, citizen to citizen, explaining why this election matters to you, and which issues you think ought to matter to the US electorate. It may even be a chance to persuade somebody to use their vote at all.
To maximise the likelihood of your efforts making a difference, we’ve zeroed in on one of the places where this year’s election truly will be decided: Clark County, Ohio, which is balanced on a razor’s edge between Republicans and Democrats. In the 2000 election, Al Gore won Clark County by 1% – equivalent to 324 votes – but George Bush won the state as a whole by just four percentage points. This time round, Ohio is one of the most crucial swing states: Kerry and Bush have been campaigning there tire lessly – they’ve visited Clark County itself – and the most recent Ohio poll shows, once again, a 1% difference between the two of them. The voters we will target in our letter-writing initiative are all Clark County residents, and they are all registered independents, which somewhat increases the chances of their being persuadable.
From the UK, it seems that 14,000 readers were inspired to contact counterparts in Ohio, including the authors John Le Carré and Antonia Fraser and the scientist Richard Dawkins.
Understandably, there was a variety of reactions from the States. I have included a few of the ‘best’ below:
Consider this: stay out of American electoral politics. Unless you would like a company of US Navy Seals – Republican to a man – to descend upon the offices of the Guardian, bag the lot of you, and transport you to Guantanamo Bay, where you can share quarters with some lonely Taliban shepherd boys.
Now a positive one:
I am a student and life-long resident of Clark County, Ohio. I just wanted you to know that this is a wonderful idea you’ve initiated; people here love and respect the United Kingdom, especially the prime minister. I hope this campaign will be successful for your newspaper and for us voters.
A quite vocally anti-Grauniad response:
KEEP YOUR F**KIN’ LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. HEY, SHITHEADS, REMEMBER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR? REMEMBER THE WAR OF 1812? WE DIDN’T WANT YOU, OR YOUR POLITICS HERE, THAT’S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUT. FOR THE 47% OF YOU WHO DON’T WANT PRESIDENT BUSH, I SAY THIS … TOUGH SHIT!
And a nice, subtle one from someone who oviously knows how international law works…
Please be advised that I have forwarded this to the CIA and FBI.
And finally, as featured on Have I Got News For You:
Have you not noticed that Americans don’t give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies … I don’t give a rat’s ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don’t. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah – and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.
So, it seems that Operation Clark County, although in theory a fantastic idea to subvert the American electoral process, has actually acheived the opposite effect to its aim: Americans being as they are, anyone who gets advice to vote for John Kerry will naturally go and vote for Bush 43. It can’t be helped. It’s how they are built.
Oh, and it could also be something to do with the voting booths… (requires QuickTime)