The 1988 presidential election - 11 November 1988

Last Tuesday morning, on a brilliant day with all the scarlet maple leaves gone brown underfoot, but the various oaks still fluttering gold against a blue sky, we went off, as we do once every four years, round the bay and up a country road to the little schoolhouse and took our place behind no more than a dozen old folk, senior citizens or who are retired and can afford to wait till the early rush is over.

A large, comfortable old lady, technically known as a poll watcher, handed us a pen and checked our new signatures against the old one and in our turn, we went between the curtains of the voting booth and pulled the lever that closes them and faced a vertical row of seven printed names, or rather seven groups of two names, candidates for president and vice president of the United States.

From the top down it read Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, Right to Life, Libertarian, National Alliance. Now these are separate parties, though some of them were running either Dukakis-Benson or Bush-Quale.

The Libertarian party candidate was a retired Congressman who wants, among other things devoutly to be wished, to abolish income tax altogether and to abolish American foreign policy in the sense of fetching home the hundreds of thousands of American warriors abroad. His national vote was negligible.

The National Alliance party is more interesting. Its presidential candidate is a woman, a black woman, and she was at once the first woman and the first black to appear on the ballots of all 50 states as a presidential candidate. She and her followers are embittered defeatists of the Reverend Jesse Jackson and remained outraged, or sore at least, at his being pushed offstage once the Democratic convention was over.

Her programme was simple and severe, summed up in the slogan "Dump Dukakis", the idea being by voting for her to deny the governor black votes in key states, ensure the victory of Mr Bush and so begin to mobilise the counter-revolution in the Democratic party in the interests of Jesse in '92.

I don't think it was ever going to matter much how many black votes she took away from the governor. Four years ago, the Democrat Mr Mondale took 94% of the black vote, it didn't help him. And whereas President Reagan took 6% of the black vote, this time Mr Bush took 11%. There was, in other words, in the big cities a slight but helpful move of blacks towards the Republican party.

All right, so we're looking at a war with seven vertical rows, each with a little lever at the left edge. Horizontally there are 12 separate slots, the first is for president, vice president then follows if a United States senator is up for election or reelection, his name and his opponent.

After that, we move on to the state government, you have to choose a state senator and in your district an assemblyman, the assembly is the New York lower house. Then you have a list of judges to elect for the state Supreme Court and then for district attorney for civil court and so on.

Most people bring a little newspaper cutting with them with their thoughtful choices ticked off so they don't spend the morning behind the curtain, but that's not all, there is a lever and another printed line at the top not of names but of propositions, that's to say of issues that affect your state and/or your county, which are to be decided by a referendum.

On our wall there's one, to float a bond issue to pay for extending and improving the maze of freeways and motorways and other roads on Long Island. A second would borrow a hefty sum to protect the water supply of Long Island, which comes exclusively from aquifers and which is declining.

In New York City, there was a proposition setting out a procedure to declare the mayor incapable – not, of course, necessarily old Ed Koch, but some other mayor who might in specified ways go round the bend. Every state has at the top of the voting machine wall, these state-wide propositions and everyone of the 3,000-odd counties of the United States is entitled to draft its own, so you see voting, especially in a presidential year, is not just a matter of closing the curtain, flicking all the little levers against your chosen horizontal – that is, party – line.

In some states, the very act of voting is so arduous because of the number of offices to be filled, but mainly because of the knottiness and complexity of the propositions that a great many people are stricken with pre-electoral fatigue and don't vote at all.

California had a ballot this time, it took 20 minutes to read by a fast reader, it had several propositions expressed in legal jargon so dense, if accurate, that people demanded and in two cities got an allowance of 10 minutes each inside the booth. It was not enough even for sharp lawyers and the time limit was waived. No wonder the California vote was especially late this time in coming in.

Of course, because of the three-hour time lag it's always midnight eastern time before the polls close up there and the three television networks found themselves this year squeezed in an ethical corner. There was a resounding outcry around the nation four years ago when the election result was clear and was called hours before the polls had closed on the west coast.

This year, the networks took a solemn or a respectable oath that they would not predict the results in the west coast states until their polls had closed at midnight, eastern time. However, if it was plain that the election had been decided by the rest of the country while Californians or Oregonians and Washingtonians were still voting, their sense of professional responsibility would compel them to declare the election settled – and of course that's exactly what happened.

And this reminds me irresistibly of a true story about the presidential election of 1916. The United States was not yet in the First World War, the Republican candidate was a majestic, bearded justice of the Supreme Court right out of central casting – Charles Evans Hughes.

The Democrat was the incumbent, President Wilson who campaigned on the magical slogan he kept us out of war. In those days, need I say, there were few states that had voting machines though Thomas Edison devised the first model in 1869 and it took a day and a night to transmit to the east the results from California, Oregon and Washington.

Justice Hughes carried most of the populous east and by the evening after the election it was pretty clear that he'd won. He was staying at the Astor Hotel in New York and a beacon on top of the New York Times building flashed red indicating a Republican victory.

Two brass bands marched out from the Union League Club; a great crowd massed outside the Astor and cheered the new president. Justice Hughes graciously acknowledged the tribute and went to bed president. Some time in the very early morning, a reporter who'd been waiting and watching for the western returns telephoned the Astor and Justice Hughes. He got a butler. "I'm sorry sir," said the man "but the president is still asleep."

Said the reporter, "better wake him up and tell him he's not president". California had come in and tipped the electoral vote to Wilson, the man who kept us out of war. The following April, Wilson asked Congress to declare a war, which it did, on the German Empire and its allies.

More than any other state, I believe, California passes many of its laws not through bills put up to the legislature by its elected representatives, but through these propositions or referendums, referenda, printed on the ballot. And this time in no state has a proposition caused such a turmoil within hours of its passage as California's proposition 103. It simply asked the voters to approve a 20% cut in automobile insurance, which is of course compulsory. It doesn't sound like a call for a revolution, but in a state that is 800 miles long, has five climates and almost twice as many motor cars as any other single state, this proposal pinched the insurance companies where they live.

There are 25 million people in California and 15 and a half million automobiles. Imagine a Britain with 56 million people and 34 million motor cars. The insurance premiums are high. For a single-person registration $1100 a year would now go down to $900. The consumer groups are rejoicing, the insurance companies were howling.

By the dawn's early light of Wednesday the 9th, one of the biggest companies announced by nightfall that it was withdrawing from automobile insurance altogether. The sixth-largest company in the state announced it will be "impossible for us to operate at the premium levels mandated by Proposition 103". There was talk of wholesale dismissal of insurance agents; the industry has already started to draft a court challenge setting out its outlays in huge damage awards and medical expenses.

California has no worse of an accident record than any other state. In fact, according to an AA study, the safest drivers in the country are California women between the ages of 21 and 26, but with those 15 million cars humming around, the insurance companies have a case. I gather from friends that one day after the election the hubbub over Proposition 103 has drowned out most talk about the deficit and about Mr Bush's plans for his administration.

Since I went out on a limb last weekend and laid out what I took to be the real reasons for Mr Bush's coming inevitable victory by 41 States to 9, I miss-guessed Minnesota. I don't feel any compulsion to rehearse them over again, but I must report one voter's amazing, wholly unpredictable, reason for voting for Governor Dukakis.

Tuesday evening, I was in our small local supermarket. At the counter, two oldish ladies, one plump with a foreign accent, the other wizened. The wizened one was nattering away at the plump one like a woodpecker "Why, why, why," she kept shouting, "Why could you possibly vote for Dukakis?".

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.