Forwarded to me from Dan, who got it from 'who knows where'...

1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third
   world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime
   minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that
   nation's secret police (CIA).
   
2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based
   on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's
   pre-democracy past.
   
3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's victory' turned on disputed
   votes cast in a province governed by his brother!
   
4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district
   heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of
   voters to vote for the wrong candidate.
   
5. Imagine that that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing
   for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in
   near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.
   
6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were
   intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the
   authority of the self-declared winner's brother.
   
7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that
   the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer,certainly, than
   the vote counting machines' margin of error.
   
8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a
   more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the
   disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.
   
9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major
   province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation
   and actually led the nation in executions.
   
10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to
    appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on then
    high court of that nation.