This time its different – 2016 US Presidential Elections

                

                It took almost 80 weeks & over a billion dollars for America to arrive on the ‘2016 Election Tuesday’. The world’s greatest democracy is going to exercise their right to vote in the 58^th quadrennial Presidential elections. 146 million will be lining up in the polling booths or sending in their choices via mail.

            These elections have been anything but cordial. Election is all about presenting different ideas and perspective so they tend to be heated, but this one went to the extreme. These are my fifth US elections that I am following and it has been definitely unlike the previous four.

·      The level of anxiety among ordinary people is palpable. For some reason almost the whole voting population of US is aware of everything that both the candidates have said or believe in; And strangely everyone whom I have spoken to have extreme views about the one that they dislike. Some dislike the ‘two faced’ Hilary while the rest don’t trust Trump’s ‘right leaning’ views.

·     Another jarring thing about these elections is the ‘outside’ influence. This would be the first time when news networks in America are mentioning Kremlin with US election night. There has been convincing proof of Russia being involved in STEALING (not leaking) internal materials to damage one candidate.

·        Not to mention the involvement of the Federal Bureau of investigation - An unprecedented bungling of public handling of the (legitimate) Clinton email investigation by Director Comey.

·       Finally the ‘slowness’ of the traditional media to learn about candidate’s inaccurate statements and how to handle candidates during national debates that are supposed to be focusing on their future policies and strategies. Instead the three debates became a slugfest of personal attacks.

                

     These elections almost became a ‘reality TV drama’. I strongly believe in the democratic institution and hope that after all of this United States of America will begin to heal starting Nov. 9^th. But one thing is for sure (& this is very unfortunate) 2016 US Presidential elections will go down in history as the one were in people voted for the candidate they ‘disliked’ less !!