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The dramatic increase in court-won elections worldwide in recent years is proving to be a pivotal issue in deciding who is and stays in power, and in this sense Al Franken and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have a lot in common. This transformation of democratic victories from free elections to the application of rules and regulations by the courts hit a high profile point with Bush and Florida in 2000 but has since become a political plateau that risks shaking the very foundation of liberal principles, especially those conservatives depend on most.
Comparing the statements made by the Minnesota judges in the Franken case and that made by Iranian Guardian Council makes all too clear the unabashed power of court intervention in deciding victors of 'democratic' elections. "Based on Iran's constitution, the Guardian Council is the top legislative body to review complaints over the election," says Abbasali Kadkhodai, the Council's official spokesman. "The council members have unanimously approved the election result." Unanimity is not democracy.
The judges in the Franken case also approved their decision unanimously, saying in their official statement that "because strict compliance with the statutory requirements for absentee voting is, and always has been required, there is no basis on which voters could have reasonably believed that anything less than strict compliance would suffice." Although it is unlikely that protests will erupt in the Midwest as they did in the Middle East, they would both have the selfsame cause.
What the two cases have in common aside from the fact that they were decided by judges on technicalities pales in comparison to what makes them different: one is based on the US Constitution, the other on Islamic law. Or maybe, when it comes to deciding elections, they are not so different after all, a real possibility which all democracies like them in the world need to confront head on or risk ceasing to be the vehicles of the people's will they were designed to be. Judges implement laws, not people's wills, and therein lies the rub.
When democracy rests almost entirely on a set of rules and regulations devised by those in power and implemented by judges placed by them, democracy stops meaning free elections or rule by the people and begins to mean automated bureaucracies devoid of relations to people's needs and aspirations. The Roman Republic was for the vast majority of its existence a totalitarian regime in disguise, which court-run democracies as current events creating the future portend.






