Vote like an Egyptian

The Middle-east times has an excellent analysis of the referendum's supposed 53% turnout. Here is a money quote: In any case the results of the poll met everybody's expectations. In a country where most people never bother to register, the government claimed that the referendum passed with an 83 percent majority. That figure might actually be accurate - if you count all the stuffed ballot boxes. They also insist that 53 percent of the 32 million eligible voters participated in this scandal. It is that figure that deserves further scrutiny. First of all, one needs to discount the 5 million public sector employees who were told that casting a vote was part of their job description. Independent journalists reported that many voting centers were virtually empty and your humble servant spent two days randomly asking a hundred or so Cairo pedestrians if they had ever been caught with a voter registration card in their possession. The answers from this admittedly unscientific survey indicate that a lot of people had no idea that a referendum was taking place and there was a high correlation that the small percentage that voted was employed in the public sector. Let's do some quick math: 53% of 32 million = 16,960,000 16,960,000- 5 million public sector employesss= 11,960,000 11,960,000/ 32,000,000 = 37% turnout, assuming that those are all actual votes (doubtfull) and that the dead did not vote this time like they did in the previous elections (Yeah right). Read the whole thing!