Leftist Handily Wins Brazilian Presidential Race

With 99 percent of the ballots tallied in Sunday's runoff, Mr. da Silva was leading handily with 61.2 percent of the vote, compared with 38.8 percent for his rival, José Serra of the centrist Brazilian Social Democratic Party, which has governed this nation of 175 million people for the past eight years. His dominance, with nearly 52 million votes, gives him an indisputable mandate to remake Latin America's most populous country.
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Election Officials Braced for Big Problems at the Polls

Two years after the election fiasco in Florida, when hanging chads in the deadlocked presidential contest alerted the world to major flaws in how Americans vote, the states have made little progress in overhauling their election systems.
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What a contrast in elections. Brazil is able to hold an election and have 99% of the votes counted before the day is over. We have a system where the rich do all they can to keep the poor from voting or, if they do, from counting their votes. And they call this a democracy.