1/ There are plenty of Euros smugly turning up their nose at America's "election chaos" who don't understand a number of key things about the USA. Almost all European countries (in fact, most countries) have mandatory government registration of all residents.

2/ Anytime you move, you must notify government authorities of your new address. Europeans, who have lived with strong centralized states for centuries, simply accept this and have a hard time imagining how it could be different. And it's easy to keep these records in small
3/ countries with small populations. So in Germany, when elections happen, the government sends a vote authorization notice to your address, which you then take to the polls along with your national ID card. This indeed makes for simple elections, since the state
4/ already knows who you are & where you live. In the United States, however, citizens are not obliged to register their address with the government as a general duty. There is no centralized register in the US of where every citizen lives. Americans are much more
5/ skeptical of gov't in this regard than Europeans are. They would never accept a duty to constantly inform the state where they live. Nor is there any national ID card in the US. The closest thing is a driver's license, but if you don't drive, it's quite possible you'll simply
6/ have no official government identity document at all. Most Americans also don't have a passport, since the USA is a very big country and many people live thousands of miles from the nearest national border. Further, the USA is a *thousand* times more federalist than any
7/ European nation. No European country even comes close to the level of devolution in the USA. Each American state can and does have its own election laws, and there is no move to make them more uniform, because Americans prefer to have most of the laws governing
8/ them be made at the state level, where politicians are more accountable and responsive. So, to sum up, there is no national registry of residents/voters, a wide diversity of ways to prove identity, and a diverse set of elections laws state by state.
9/ This means that in *very close* nationwide elections, results can take days, because the work of verifying identity and addresses takes place *after* voting, not *before*. However, the vast majority of elections are (1) not nationwide; and (2) not very close.
10/ Thousands of orderly local elections take place in the USA every year which attract zero attention abroad. And even when there are very close nationwide elections in which vote counting takes days or even weeks, there is never any serious unrest, because people accept this.
11/ The American voting system is hardly perfect, but it works well enough often enough that nobody sees it as a crisis. And the steps which would be needed to have lightning-fast European-style elections would never be acceptable to most Americans. END

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शमशान में जब महर्षि दधीचि के मांसपिंड का दाह संस्कार हो रहा था तो उनकी पत्नी अपने पति का वियोग सहन नहीं कर पायी और पास में ही स्थित विशाल पीपल वृक्ष के कोटर में अपने तीन वर्ष के बालक को रख के स्वयं चिता पे बैठ कर सती हो गयी ।इस प्रकार ऋषी दधीचि और उनकी पत्नी की मुक्ति हो गयी।


परन्तु पीपल के कोटर में रखा बालक भूख प्यास से तड़पने लगा। जब कुछ नहीं मिला तो वो कोटर में पड़े पीपल के गोदों (फल) को खाकर बड़ा होने लगा। कालान्तर में पीपल के फलों और पत्तों को खाकर बालक का जीवन किसी प्रकार सुरक्षित रहा।

एक दिन देवर्षि नारद वहां से गुजर रहे थे ।नारद ने पीपल के कोटर में बालक को देख कर उसका परिचय मांगा -
नारद बोले - बालक तुम कौन हो?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चहता हूँ ।
नारद - तुम्हारे जनक कौन हैं?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चाहता हूँ ।

तब नारद ने आँखें बन्द कर ध्यान लगाया ।


तत्पश्चात आश्चर्यचकित हो कर बालक को बताया कि 'हे बालक! तुम महान दानी महर्षि दधीचि के पुत्र हो । तुम्हारे पिता की अस्थियों का वज्रास्त्र बनाकर ही देवताओं ने असुरों पर विजय पायी थी।तुम्हारे पिता की मृत्यु मात्र 31 वर्ष की वय में ही हो गयी थी'।

बालक - मेरे पिता की अकाल मृत्यु का क्या कारण था?
नारद - तुम्हारे पिता पर शनिदेव की महादशा थी।
बालक - मेरे उपर आयी विपत्ति का कारण क्या था?
नारद - शनिदेव की महादशा।
इतना बताकर देवर्षि नारद ने पीपल के पत्तों और गोदों को खाकर बड़े हुए उस बालक का नाम पिप्पलाद रखा और उसे दीक्षित किया।