Election news: apathy and scams

Five days later and the national legislative elections are still making news.

I know this because as part of our orientation to this new job we are spending hours every day sitting with Nadir, a trilingual former UN translator, who reads us headlines from Arabic and French newspapers. Some 24 newspapers circulate in Algeria, none very widely.

Anyway, my favorite story of late was about the guy who voted for his candidate in the morning, then returned -- under a habib -- to cast a second vote. He got caught in his womanly disguise by an overly sexy walk that keen-eyed officials spotted as phony.

Participation in the election was weak. Only slightly more than a third of voters cast ballots. But it was actually worse than that. Some 1 million blank ballots were turned in.

The obvious explanation was, as one of our drivers told us, an expression of exasperation over a bunch of politicians all equally inept and dishonest.

But, Nadir explained, the blank ballots are also a clever way around a government scheme to get people to vote. It seems that when you cast a ballot you get a paper stamped "VOTE," kind of like the stickers American voter get at the polls. However, in Algeria you have to show this stamp if you want to get certain bureaucratic forms and documents. Rebellious Algerians have figured out how to get a vote stamp without voting.