U.S. election

Concerning your editorial of Nov. 4 entitled American snafu, there are several points I would like to address. Perhaps, as you suggest, the Third World's [borrowing] countries consider the United States' election system less than democratic.

That two-century-old system to which the U.S. is vulnerable is called the Constitution, a living document that has enlivened the Republic and which provides the foundation upon which America's power rests. Although perhaps not divinely inspired, it was brought into existence by men who believed that mankind has been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

The Third World and other countries would do well to pay attention to what those rights include -- for women as well as men. Florida's "hanging chads" in 2000 were a problem concerning the mechanics of voting, not the Constitutional system. The chads got hung up, not dissenters. This time the focus was on Ohio which, like all states, has its own laws concerning provisional and absentee ballots, laws that must be in harmony with the Constitution.

The Electoral College system, one of many democratic compromises, assures that small-population states have a minimum of three votes and prevents large-population states from exerting undue control. Forgive this foreigner if he suggests that non- Javanese Indonesians might feel more like they were a part of the country if their own voice were given more weight.

"American snafu" you say. It is well known that media people tend to be liberals who cherish the freedom to say what they want, regardless of its fitness, with impunity. As one of your own spokesmen stated, as reported in the edition of Sept. 17, Christopher Warren, president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said, "... No journalist should ever be jailed for defamation."

SNAFU is an acronym, which I believe originated in the military, among those trained in toughness and roughness, not in smoothness. The F-word is the key. As you know, the Democrat Party and the pro-abortion media have taken another regressive step in their attempts to legitimize pro-abomination same-sex marriage. Eleven states also had proposals concerning this subject on their ballots. All were overwhelmingly rejected.

Controversy concerning social realities, both implicit and explicit in the F-word, may also account for getting a record number of people out to vote. They came out to express preference for a party, a man and what they stood for. The majority prefer to remain, as you erroneously suggest, "frozen in obsolete traditions that no longer conform to the fashion of the voting mass[es]." RICHARD E. HARTMAN Bandung