Word: voting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...problem is, Karzai's legitimacy is shot. Even before allegations of vote-rigging, many Afghans were angry with him for his failure to curb corruption. The aid community has been dismayed by the warlords and drug traffickers infesting his government. And Washington is fed up with his duplicity and fecklessness. Even though he came to power on the back of a U.S.-led invasion, Karzai has portrayed himself as the one man willing to criticize coalition forces. "Karzai wants his legacy to be an Afghan leader who stood up against the foreigners," says Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Center...
Still, say Republicans, taking on such a monumental bill solo has almost never been done before: 16 Republicans voted for the 1935 Social Security Act and 13 voted to create Medicare, and they are quick to point out that 12 Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for the Medicare Prescription Drug Program in 2005. "I think the sheer act of passing it with Democratic-only votes would result in significant backlash, not just from Republicans - though clearly it would gin up Republican intensity - but I suspect from independents as well," says Whit Ayers, a GOP strategist...
Ayers, though, has a conveniently short memory: only two Democrats were involved in the negotiations surrounding the Medicare Prescription Drug measure. Once a bill like that gets to the floor, members have a much harder time voting down legislation that could help thousands, if not millions, of constituents. For that reason, Democrats are hoping the health-care bill will be a work of compromise so that, when they do get enough votes to bring it to the floor, it will be hard for Republicans to vote against...
...expectations had died that they would ever sign on to a deal: as much as they would be happy to kill health-care reform, Republicans want to make the case that they gave bipartisanship their all. In fact, both cited "partisan deadlines" as reasons that they couldn't vote for the bill...
...wide-ranging interview with TIME, Abdullah rejected all talk of compromise over the disputed poll. Unofficial results give Karzai 54.6% of the vote and Abdullah just 27.8%. But European observers say that at least 1.5 million ballots - more than one-third of the total - may have been fraudulent. If, as opponents and foreign observers allege, most of the tainted ballots turn out to be for Karzai, that could drop the President below the 50% mark. "The international community has to ask itself: Will it tolerate this massive fraud?" Abdullah asks...