I am not posting this because I think India is doing everything right.

I am posting it because in a country where so many people have big mouths and lack the ambition to get out and vote these pictures are pretty inspiring.

Hat's off to democracy...or well...to the dream and hope of democracy.

These are great pics.

Enjoy.

India's massive general election
On May 16th, 2009, the Election Commission of India announced the results of its recent month-long India-wide election for their lower house of Parliament - the largest democratic election in the world. An estimated 714 million voters (from a population of 1.2 billion) were eligible to cast their vote in one of five separate phases at over 800,000 polling stations, starting on April 16th. Logistically difficult, massive in scale, and opposed by various rebel groups, separatists and protestors, the elections still managed to be held with minimal disruption, with an average voter turnout of greater than 56%. The big winner was the the Indian National Congress party, which will form the new government under the incumbent prime minister Manmohan Singh. As with any photo story from India, it is impossible to capture every aspect in just a handful of pictures - collected here are only some of the scenes that played out across the nation over the last month. (40 photos total)

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/indias_massive_general_electio.html

A month long election?

I'm sure we would have that kind of turn out if not more i the election lasted a month.

Heck with that amount of time we would prob have about 200% of "elegible" voters voting.

Not saying there is any corruption in our voting system.

Very cool. Always a joy to see Democracy spread ;)

There's pragmatism and purism. Our two major rivals are China and India. India, the world's biggest democracy, can't get things dome quickly or efficiently because of the concept of democracy in a country with a billion and a quarter people, give or take. China, with a similar amount of people has no democracy other then some economic democracy, and has progressed leaps and bounds.

India has riots, 300 candidates per noffice, mass deeaths and destruction over city council elections. Passion is great, but n ot so great in politics. Makes for to much of the them against us, red state, blue state, your mother wears combat boots citizenship that has us hamstrung.

There's a middle ground. somewhere.