I'm not sure I agree on this, Clive.
Voting procedures in Florida were still questionable in 2004, and there is every evidence they are still not sound.
There are so many gimmicks that are used, including the one of timing the closing of polls so that voting is difficult in working-class districts, leaving long lines of black citizens unable to cast the ballot they waited for.
But, for those unfamiliar with some of the nitty-gritty of American politics, vote fraud, to paraphrase H. Rapp Brown, is as American as cherry pie.
Kennedy was only elected due to fraud in Chicago, which swung Illinois, and in Johnson's Texas.
The ballots in Chicago weren't reported until dawn when they could be sure the "Downstate" (largely Republican) ballots had been reported. This enabled them to generate the required number of nullifying votes.
Texas was rife with vote fraud. Johnson himself started his career with vote fraud (reference: Robert Caro's biography) in first running for Congress.
I grew up in Chicago, and the stories of vote fraud were legend, part of growing up.
The local political machine used to register the names of the dead from graveyards.
They also used to use the trick of keeping a slug of pencil lead under a fingernail to mark paper ballots surreptitiously and thus invalidate them.
When voting machines came in, there were lights-out, after-hours sessions with the levers being thrown countless times to assure the proper outcome. Or sometimes, known persons were allowed to vote multiple times.
The current Diebold voting computers being used in a number of American jurisdictions have been shown time and again to be seriously flawed.
The fraud exists on both sides. In most national elections, the fraud either cancels out or isn't sufficient to swing the national vote.
But whenever the vote is close - as with Kennedy in 1960 or Bush in 2000 - fraud in the right place swings it.
Of course, another important element here is the antique, anti-democratic electoral-college provision of the Constitution. It effectively means that even one vote in a state more - honest or not - gives the whole state to the candidate getting it.
A simple national count of votes would clean up a lot. America has had a string of minority presidents for this reason, let alone fraudulent ones.
Another problem with American national elections is the individual states control voting. They decide on the form of the ballots. They decide on the hours. They count the ballots. Clearly this opens the opportunity for local fraud much more than if federal authorities governed balloting.
Don't get too optimistic about a clean election this time. Obama is a red flag for a number of communities and political interests. They will not be sitting idle.
He will win if his vote is overwhelming, something I believe he is capable of achieving with Old Man McCain as his opponent.
