American idiot (re)elected by American idiots

An email from a friend which pretty much says it all:

"What in the name of fuck has just happened? I was so sure that the American people would come to their senses and vote out that murderous, amoral, moronic little bastard. Even in the last few weeks of the campaign Bush proved, as if there was ever any doubt, just what an imbecile he was, in every single debate and every single speech. A man who has without shame admitted that he doesn’t give a fuck for the environment or any other country than his own. Neither health care nor civil rights have troubled his thoughts once in the past four years.

His idiotic foray in to Iraq was done (shamefully) with the collusion of our own government, but without any thought given to the consequences once Saddam Hussein had been captured and Baghdad had fallen. That every week more and more allied soldiers and civilians are losing their lives there has not worried him even slightly.

And yet again he has been given four more years to fuck up the entire world.

I realise that you understand this already. As such I am only writing to convey to you my almost complete loss of faith in humanity as a result of this betrayal of reason by the American public.

The only hope I have been able to take from the whole sorry mess is that many more Americans actually bothered to vote at all, rather than 2000’s disgusting spurning of the democratic process.

P.S. Because I don’t have a lot of time I have omitted to mention his reprehensible views and policies on homosexuals, gun control and capital punishment. Needless to say, these are other areas of his administration that worry me greatly."

As a Brit, I have to ask: what is with the American system? How can one presidential candidate announce victory? How can the other concede defeat? And how can results be called by television stations? Is there an independent electoral body, and if so, what exactly is their role?

Long live American democracy, a political system to be proud of and which should legitimately be exported by force to uncivilised countries around the globe.