Americans out in force for election celebrations

By Pete Sweeney

Date: 04/11/04

Many hours before John Kerry conceded defeat to George W. Bush, election parties were in full swing in Brussels. The loudest event was a reception at the Renaissance Hotel on Tuesday night, where guests included Europeans draped in various incarnations of the American flag.

Morning events included an early breakfast at the Conrad Hotel and a later one hosted by the US embassy to Belgium in the Dollar Room at the Marriott Hotel.

The loudest event was a reception at the Renaissance Hotel on Tuesday night, where guests included the US Ambassador to Belgium, Tom C. Korologos, and Europeans draped in various incarnations of the American flag. While a bipartisan camaraderie prevailed in the thousand-strong crowd, Bush supporters were in a minority.

"There's been no partisan issue," said Kevin Leland Prager, chairman of the Brussels chapter of Democrats Abroad. "There hasn't been any opposition that we could find - and we did look for them. But that's OK. There's been enough opposition elsewhere."

Event staff attempted to track the "ever-changing demographic" of the guests using ballot boxes, but the demographic was unchangingly sympathetic to Kerry's candidacy. They danced to a waltz version of the Star Spangled Banner.

But the success of Democrats Abroad was not matched in the US, where record-setting attempts to mobilize voters could not bring victory. It appears that Republicans mobilized their newly registered or dormant voters in excess of Democrats by three million. "There are some little variations here and there," admitted Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy in Washington DC, "but the overwhelming trend seems to be that the country is moving in unison along partisan lines".

Professor Michael McDonald, of the Washington DC-based think-tank The Brookings Institution, gave partial credit for the sweeping Republican victory to last-minute mobilization efforts. "The '72-Hour Program' is something the Republicans have been experimenting with for a while," he said, "and they've really got it down."

Richie noted that exit polls in contested states like Florida and Ohio did not align with the published results, which might provide grist for the conspiracy mills, particularly in states where computerized voting has eliminated any paper trail.

"We still have this hodgepodge system of counting ballots," Richie said. "We know that the rolls aren't complete or clean." Richie welcomed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's monitoring of the election process. The OSCE will release its report on the 2004 election on 4 November.

Article reports on the celebrations of Americans in Brussels following the Presidential elections on 2 November 2004