With academic studies showing the Georgia touchscreens to be poorly programmed, full of security holes and prone to tampering, and with thousands of similar machines from different companies being introduced at high speed across the country, computer voting may, in fact, be US democracy’s own 21st-century nightmare.In many Georgia counties last November, the machines froze up, causing long delays as technicians tried to reboot them. The machines, however, turned out to be anything but reliable. Last November, the state became the first in the country to conduct an election entirely with touchscreen voting machines, after lavishing $54m (£33m) on a new system that promised to deliver the securest, most up-to-date, most voter-friendly election in the history of the republic. When the Georgia secretary of state’s office published its demographic breakdown of the election earlier this year, it turned out there was no surge of angry white men; in fact, the only subgroup showing even a modest increase in turnout was black women.There were also big, puzzling swings in partisan loyalties in different parts of the state. In 58 counties, the vote was broadly in line with the primary election. In 27 counties in Republican-dominated north Georgia, however, Max Cleland unaccountably scored 14 percentage points higher than he had in the primaries. And in 74 counties in the Democrat south, Saxby Chambliss garnered a whopping 22 points more for the Republicans than the party as a whole had won less than three months earlier.Now, weird things like this do occasionally occur in elections, and the figures, on their own, are not proof of anything except statistical anomalies worthy of further study But in Georgia there was an extra reason to be suspicious.

They also said that Roy Barnes had lost because of a surge of “angry white men” punishing him for eradicating all but a vestige of the old confederate symbol from the state flag.But something about these explanations did not make sense, and they have made even less sense over time. Barnes lost the governorship to the Republican, Sonny Perdue, 46 per cent to 51 per cent, a swing of as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls. Cleland lost to Chambliss 46 per cent to 53, a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points.Red-faced opinion pollsters suddenly had a lot of explaining to do and launched internal investigations. Political analysts credited the upset – part of a pattern of Republican successes around the country – to a huge campaigning push by President Bush in the final days of the race. But then the results came in, and all of Georgia appeared to have been turned upside down. In a somewhat closer, keenly watched Senate race, polls indicated that Max Cleland, the popular Democrat up for re-election, was ahead by two to five points against his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss.
Those figures were more or less what political experts would have expected in state with a long tradition of electing Democrats to statewide office.

Something very odd happened in the mid-term elections in Georgia last November. On the eve of the vote, opinion polls showed Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democratic governor, leading by between nine and 11 points. But the son is far less experienced.”THE REPUBLIC AT A GLANCE* Azerbaijan attained independence after the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991.* The name Azerbaijan means “land of fire”, thought to stem from the burning surface deposits of oil and gas. The country has seven billion barrels of oil reserves.* It’s eight million inhabitants are mainly ethnic Azeris, who are predominantly Shi’ite Muslims..

Vadim Teperman, an expert on the region at the Institute for International Economic and Political Research, based in Moscow, said: “Aliyev senior had real authority; he could keep the army and security forces under control. Nearly 1 million Azeri refugees live in camps.Ali Hasanov, the Deputy Prime Minister, said: “If Armenia continues to occupy our country, then Azerbaijan has the right to free those territories by any means necessary.”For the past decade, Geidar Aliyev has successfully contained the hawks. The war ended in 1993 with Armenians in control of their ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as large swaths of surrounding Azeri territory. “But we can do nothing about this.”Experts worry that if Ilham is elected, he may not be able to handle Azerbaijan’s problems, in particular the simmering conflict with Armenia.