The Guardian - Their Letter Writing Campaign

The Guardian... What can I say? This piece of intestinal evacuation stands on its own lack of merit.

My take? Living proof that no one is completely useless, they can always serve as a bad example. The Guardian is dedicated to exposing the ravings of a particular group of elitist, blasé, sophisticated, grown-up infantiles of the British bourgeoisie.

And the seeds of doubt are sown. The letter-writing campaign begins with:

Wednesday October 13, 2004
The Guardian

Dear Clark County Voter, Give Us Back the America We Loved
Yours sincerely,
John Le Carré

Three prominent Britons hit the campaign trail

Get the name of a US voter

John Le Carré

Maybe there's one good reason - just one - for re-electing George W Bush, and that's to force him to live with the consequences of his appalling actions, and answer for his own lies, rather than wish the job on a Democrat who will then get blamed for his predecessor's follies.

Probably no American president in all history has been so universally hated abroad as George W Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures, his contempt for institutions of world government, and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war - and now anarchy - upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship, but had no hand in 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the US in a dirty war against Iran.

>Is your president a great war leader because he allowed himself to be manipulated by a handful of deluded ideologues? Is Tony Blair a great war leader because he committed Britain's troops, foreign policy and domestic security to the same hare-brained adventure?

You are voting in November. We will vote next year. Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: how long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told? The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama provided the excuse. Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us.

While Bush was waging his father's war at your expense, he was also ruining your country. He made your rich richer and your poor and unemployed more numerous. He robbed your war veterans of their due and reduced your children's access to education. And he deprived more Americans than ever before of healthcare. Now he's busy cooking the books, burying deficits and calling in contingency funds to fight a war that his advisers promised him he could light and put out like a candle.

Meanwhile, your Patriot Act has swept aside constitutional and civil liberties which took brave Americans 200 years to secure, and were once the envy of a world that now looks on in horror, not just at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but at what you are doing to yourselves.

But please don't feel isolated from the Europe you twice saved. Give us back the America we loved, and your friends will be waiting for you. And here in Britain, for as long as we have Tony Blair singing the same lies as George Bush, your nightmares will be ours.

© David Cornwell 2004

· John Le Carré is a novelist.

Antonia Fraser

O duty

Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie ... ?

Why art thou so different from Venus?

And why do thou and I have so few interests in common between us?

These sentiments on the subject of duty, so brilliantly expressed by Ogden Nash, may well be yours, dear Unknown, when I, a national of another country, urge you to do your duty and vote in your coming presidential election. In fact, of course, we have all too many interests in common. When you vote - and please do vote by the way, even if you disagree with everything I am about to say - that vote will have as much effect on my future and the much longer future of my children and grandchildren, as it will on your own. For this is a crucial election, the most crucial, I believe, of my lifetime (and I first voted in 1955!).

First of all, if you back Kerry, you will be voting against a savage militaristic foreign policy of pre-emptive killing which has stained the great name of the US so hideously in recent times. A policy that Bush and his gang are set to continue - if they get the opportunity. I say "the great name" of the US because I believe that to be profoundly true. Although resolutely against the Iraq war, I remain equally resolutely philamerican, almost every movement towards liberty in the past having its roots or its refuge in the US.

As a wartime child, I am well aware of the benevolence of the American soldiers who came to our aid, the ones that filled the foreign graveyards where they lay, fallen because they had joined our war. Brought up in Oxford, I regarded these men as gods, generous gods. I shall never forget Hank, a composite of the very young American soldiers who regularly got my brother Thomas and me into the Ritz cinema to see movies such as Saboteur. In fact, Hank, in retrospect, looked rather like the Great Tom, my cinematic hero in Saving Private Ryan (so maybe Tom is Hank's boy; I like to think so). From the image of Hank to that of Abu Ghraib ...

Then there is the question of women's rights, and the possible repeal of legislation that has for a generation made all women equal before the law, not just the rich. Once again, this history of women's rights in America is long, strong and wonderful. As long ago as 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting America from France, discovered "the singular address and happy boldness" of its women, featured in Democracy in America. If you vote for Kerry, you will help to avert a move backwards towards women's suffering.

President Bush declared on Friday that, "History will decide". Dear Unknown, please be part of that history and restore your country to its greatness, both foreign and domestic.

· Antonia Fraser is a biographer and historian.

Richard Dawkins

Dear Americans,

Don't be so ashamed of your president: the majority of you didn't vote for him. If Bush is finally elected properly, that will be the time for Americans travelling abroad to simulate a Canadian accent. Please don't let it come to that. Vote against Bin Laden's dream candidate. Vote to send Bush packing.

Before 9/11 gave him his big break - the neo-cons' Pearl Harbor - Bush was written off as an amiable idiot, certain to serve only one term. An idiot he may be, but he is also sly, mendacious and vindictive; and the thuggish ideologues who surround him are dangerous. 9/11 gave America a free gift of goodwill, and it poured in from all around the world. Bush took it as a free gift to the warmongers of his party, a licence to attack an irrelevant country which, however nasty its dictator, had no connection with 9/11. The consequence is that all the worldwide goodwill has vanished. Bush's America is on the way to becoming a pariah state. And Bush's Iraq has become a beacon for terrorists.

In the service of his long-planned war (with its catastrophically unplanned aftermath), Bush not only lied about Iraq being the "enemy" who had attacked the twin towers. With the connivance of the toadying Tony Blair and the spineless Colin Powell, he lied to Congress and the world about weapons of mass destruction. He is now brazenly lying to the American electorate about how "well" things are going under the puppet government. By comparison with this cynical mendacity, the worst that can be said about John Kerry is that he sometimes changes his mind. Well, wouldn't you change your mind if you discovered that the major premise on which you had been persuaded to vote for war was a big fat lie?

Now that all other justifications for the war are known to be lies, the warmongers are thrown back on one, endlessly repeated: the world is a better place without Saddam. No doubt it is. But that's the Tony Martin school of foreign policy [Martin was a householder who shot dead a burglar who had broken into his house in 1999]. It's not how civilised countries, who follow the rule of law, behave. The world would be a better place without George Bush, but that doesn't justify an assassination attempt. The proper way to get rid of that smirking gunslinger is to vote him out.

As the bumper stickers put it, "Re-defeat Bush". But, this time, do it so overwhelmingly that neither his brother's friends in Florida nor his father's friends on the Supreme Court will be able to rig the count. Decent Americans - there are absolutely more intelligent, educated, civilised, cultivated, compassionate people in America than in any other country in the western world - please show your electoral muscle this time around. We in the rest of the world, who sadly cannot vote in the one election that really affects our future, are depending on you. Please don't let us down.

· Richard Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University.

More letters to Clark County will be appearing in G2 over the next fortnight.

Wednesday October 13, 2004
The Guardian

Football and Mowers
A Brief Guide to Clark County

Get the name of a US voter

Even Ohio's proudest natives concede that it doesn't have the rough-hewn glamour of Texas, or the evocative pull of states such as Louisiana or Mississippi; it isn't particularly central to US history, like Massachusetts, or even notably eccentric, like Utah. It is flat. It is temperate: it is the heartland.
"It's a balanced place," Herb Asher, an Ohio State University political scientist, says simply. As a result, Clark County, the focus of the Guardian's election project, offers about as representative a cross-section of American life outside the big cities as it is possible to find in such a kaleidoscopic nation.

The area's vital statistics underline that: in 2003, the population of 143,351 had a median income of $40,340 (£22,500) - just a sliver below the US average. Eighty-eight per cent of them were white, compared to 77% nationally.

With an Air National Guard base in Springfield, the county's major town, and the Wright-Patterson air force base, one of the nation's most important, not far away, there is a strong military influence; that will account for much Republican support, and has kept Iraq at the centre of local pre-election debate. But the soldiers and their families are balanced by the blue-collar workforce at Navistar, Springfield's biggest local employer, which makes agricultural equipment. (Clark County's famous sons may include James Thurber, and president William H Taft, but it was another local boy, William Whitely, who made the biggest difference, by inventing the first combined self-raking reaper and mower.) Navistar has been forced to lay off hundreds of workers over the past four years; economic issues, Asher says, will be crucially important in swaying undecided voters.

When they're not working, plenty of Springfielders are watching football - the Ohio Buckeyes football team absorbs much of the state's attention, while closer to home, the focus is the longstanding crosstown sporting battle between the town's North High School and South High School. As across the midwest, antique buying and selling is also massively popular; Springfield is home to three of the region's largest antique malls. The Springfield Museum of Art is one of Ohio's finest; the picturesque campus of Wittenberg University is home to 2,000 students.

"We do have our social problems," says Tracy Figley, the general manager of WEEC Christian Radio in Springfield, and a 17-year veteran of the area. "I can't compare it to bigger cities, because I've never lived in bigger cities, but we do have gangs, we do have drug problems. I'm not sure you're even safe in what you'd traditionally call the good side of town: it depends on what mischief is lurking in the hearts of people."

Gay marriage has become a central issue for the town's sizeable evangelical community, Figley argues: he says he knows many who would have voted for Kerry despite differences on abortion but who plan to vote for Bush because of the candidates' differing positions on same-sex unions. But the key national issues of Iraq and the economy will still dominate the closing weeks of the election race.


Wednesday October 13, 2004
The Guardian
Oliver Burkeman

My fellow non-Americans ...

The result of the US election will affect the lives of millions around the world but those of us outside the 50 states have had no say in it - until now. In a unique experiment, G2 has assembled a democratic toolkit to enable people from Basildon to Botswana to campaign in the presidential race. And with a little help from the folks in Clark County, Ohio, you might help decide who takes up residence in the White House next month. Oliver Burkeman explains how.

It's just possible that you have heard this once or twice before recently, but the forthcoming American election, on November 2, may be the most important in living memory. People have been saying this about every presidential race for decades - but, as one environmentalist put it recently in a US newspaper interview, precisely the problem with crying wolf is that sometimes there is a wolf. You would be forgiven, though, for feeling increasingly helpless as you hear the "most important election" mantra repeated daily: unless you happen to be a voter in a handful of swing states, there's little you can do about the final result. If you're not American, the situation is more acute. Certainly, the actions of the US impact on our lives in overwhelming ways; British political life may now be at least as heavily influenced by White House policy as by the choices of UK voters. And yet, though the US Declaration of Independence speaks of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind", you don't, of course, have a vote. You can't even donate money to the campaigns: foreign contributions are outlawed. And you're unlikely to have the chance to do any campaigning on the ground. All you can do is wait and watch: you're powerless.

Or are you? At G2, that sounded like fighting talk. Where others might see delusions of grandeur, we saw an opportunity for public service - and so, on the following pages, we have assembled a handy set of tools that non-Americans can use to have a real chance of influencing the outcome of the vote. We've identified ways to give money to help your preferred candidate, even though direct campaign contributions from foreigners aren't allowed. There are ideas for making your voice heard in the influential local media outlets where it could really count. And at the core of it is a unique scheme to match individual Guardian readers to individual American voters, giving you the opportunity to write a personal letter, citizen to citizen, explaining why this election matters to you, and which issues you think ought to matter to the US electorate. It may even be a chance to persuade somebody to use their vote at all.

To maximise the likelihood of your efforts making a difference, we've zeroed in on one of the places where this year's election truly will be decided: Clark County, Ohio, which is balanced on a razor's edge between Republicans and Democrats. In the 2000 election, Al Gore won Clark County by 1% - equivalent to 324 votes - but George Bush won the state as a whole by just four percentage points. This time round, Ohio is one of the most crucial swing states: Kerry and Bush have been campaigning there tire lessly - they've visited Clark County itself - and the most recent Ohio poll shows, once again, a 1% difference between the two of them. The voters we will target in our letter-writing initiative are all Clark County residents, and they are all registered independents, which somewhat increases the chances of their being persuadable.

Several of the ideas described here can easily be applied across the US too, though, and we have provided further resources on our website for this purpose. While there's no point being coy about Britain's preferences in this election (never mind those of Guardain readers) - a poll last month put backing for Kerry at 47%, against 16% for Bush - we have included information for supporters of both main candidates.

It's worth considering at the outset how counterproductive this might all be, especially if approached undiplomatically. Anybody might be justifiably angered by the idea of a foreigner trying to interfere in their democratic process. But this year the issue is more charged than ever: the Bush/Cheney campaign has made a point of portraying Kerry as overly concerned about what other nations think, and the Democrat's ambiguous debate point about American foreign policy decisions needing to pass a "global test" has become one of the president's key lines of attack. "People don't necessarily want to hear what people from other countries have to say," says Rachelle Valladares, the London-based chair of Democrats Abroad. "If you contact someone you know personally in the States, and urge them to vote, it would probably carry twice the weight." Michael Dorf, a Columbia university law professor who has studied foreign influences on US elections, points out that it would not be to either candidate's advantage "to be seen as the candidate of the foreigners. Part of it's just xenophobia, but there is also a sense that, you know, this is our election: you vote for your parliament and prime minister, we vote for our president and Congress."

On the other hand, being from Britain ought to give you a certain leverage: in stump speeches and debates, Bush has repeatedly praised Tony Blair's cooperation over Iraq, making America's long-treasured alliance with the UK key to the president's defence of his foreign policy. Kerry, too, knows that he's speaking to a resilient strand of opinion when he emphasises the need for strong international alliances: a better coalition in Iraq, he constantly reiterates, might have saved US lives. (One recent poll suggested that 43% of Americans think that declining world respect for their nation is a "major problem".) As a British citizen, you can certainly wield some influence, but you could seriously alienate people too.

Write to a voter

The most powerful transatlantic connection is a personal one, so we have designed a system to match individual Guardian readers with individual voters in Clark County, in the crucial swing state of Ohio. To join in, visit www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty and enter your email address. You'll receive, by email, the name and postal address of a Clark County voter. We have included only those voters who chose to list themselves as unaffiliated, instead of as Republican or Democrat: that is no guarantee that they are persuadable, of course, but it does increase the chances. The data on which our system is based is publicly available, but we have designed it to give out each address only once, so there is no danger of recipients getting deluged.

In formulating your letter, you will need to introduce yourself: no individual Clark County voter will have any reason to be expecting your communication. And in choosing your arguments, keep in mind the real risk of alienating your reader by coming across as interfering or offensive. You might want to handwrite your letter, for additional impact, and we strongly recommend including your own name and address - it lends far more credibility to your views, and you might get a reply.

Finally, post your letter soon. Letters sent by regular airmail from the UK to the US usually take five days to reach their recipient, and there is little time to waste. Postage costs 43p for a postcard, 47p for a letter weighing 10g or less, and 68p for a letter weighing up to 20g. You don't have to visit a post office, but Royal Mail recommends writing "Par Avion - By Airmail" on the front of the envelope, and your return address on the back.

Give money

American law forbids foreigners from giving money to affect the outcome of a federal election - except that, on closer inspection, it doesn't. You're banned from donating to the campaigns themselves, or to many of the independent campaigning groups that fight explicitly on behalf of one candidate. So you need to identify officially non-partisan groups whose activities, none the less, have the practical effect of helping one candidate over the other. "Perhaps the most important way foreigners could help John Kerry would be to help out those organisations which have, as part of their mission, fostering African-American voter turnout," says Nathaniel Persily, a Pennsylvania university expert on election law. "It's quite clear that if there was 100% African-American turnout in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, John Kerry would win this election running away." The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the most obvious choice here - an influential, well-organised, non-partisan body whose get-out-the-vote activities are extremely likely to end up helping the Democrats.

"On the Republican side, it would be the Christian conservatives," Persily adds. "[Bush adviser] Karl Rove has tried to register four million additional Christian evangelicals, and if they all turn out, then Bush wins." The leading option here would be the Christian Coalition, which describes itself as "America's leading grassroots organisation defending our Godly heritage". As for more overtly partisan organisations, we don't recommend trying to donate - but it's worth pointing out that much of the law banning foreign contributions has never been tested in court and, argues Michael Dorf at Columbia, may even be unconstitutional on grounds of free speech. "If a group calling itself Europeans for Truth wants to run ads giving their view of the truth," Dorf says, "it's hard to draw a principled distinction between that and a British newspaper available at a US newsstand that has an editorial calling Bush and Blair liars."

Visit the NAACP website: http://www.naacp.org
Give to the NAACP: https://www.naacp.org/contribute.php or fax a credit-card donation to 001 410 580 5623.
Give to the NAACP in Ohio:
Send a money order marked "donation" to NAACP, 233 South High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 USA. Give to the Christian Coalition: www.cc.org or phone 001 202 479 6900.
Give to the Christian Coalition in Ohio: www.ccohio.org or phone 001 330 8871922, or send a money order to Christian Coalition of Ohio, PO Box 852, Westfield Center, Ohio 44251, USA. For resources on giving money in other swing states, visit www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty.

Make your voice heard

If you want to broadcast your views to a wider audience, focus on the media outlets swing-state residents are reading and hearing. Take care: deluging the same organisation with numerous near-identical messages rarely impresses (we speak from experience), and some activists have run into controversy recently by disseminating "astroturf" - letters purporting to be personal but emanating, in reality, from party headquarters. Springfielders read the Springfield News Sun (www.springfieldnewssun.com;) and the Columbus Dispatch (www.dispatch.com), based in the nearby state capital, is another influential outlet.

If you're feeling brave, though, you might want to explore the highly influential talk-radio airwaves. On the right, the overarchingly dominant figure is Rush Limbaugh, heard on hundreds of stations nationwide, including 19 in Ohio, some of which can be heard in Clark County. This is a strictly at-your-own-risk proposition, but if you want to join the debate, listen to the show live on the web at www.rushlimbaugh.com, between 5pm and 8pm UK time every weekday, and call in on 001 800 282 2882. Among yesterday's topics: why John Kerry doesn't understand the significance of 9/11; why John Kerry would be dangerous for America; how John Kerry politicised the death of Christopher Reeve.

Air America, the upstart liberal radio counterweight, is still in its infancy, but it can be picked up in parts of Ohio and other battleground states. Listen to the flagship show presented by the leftwing humourist Al Franken at www.airamericaradio.com, also between 5pm and 8pm on weekdays, then call in on 001 866 303 2270 (neither call will be free from the UK). Franken's focus yesterday was the "absolutely shameless" behaviour of the conservative media in America.

You can target your message on other key states by visiting a website such as www.electoral-vote.com, which updates regularly with the latest local polls, so that you can identify where the race is currently closest. Select your state, then call up a list of relevant media contacts - or even send them emails directly - via the impressively comprehensive Capitol Advantage site at http://ssl.capwiz.com/congressorg/dbq/media/.

Win the chance to watch the campaign on the ground

We are offering the four people who write the most persuasive letters to Clark County voters the chance to travel there and watch the campaign in person. At the end of October, the winners will accompany a group of Guardian journalists to Ohio to meet voters and observe the closing days of the race. For a chance to take part, you should email a copy of your letter to clark.county@guardian.co.uk, or send a copy to Clark County competition, G2, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Letters should arrive no later than October 20.

>· For more details on how you can get involved and latest news from the US campaign trail, go to guardian.co.uk/uselections2004. For terms and conditions of the Clark County competition, see www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty.


Thursday October 21, 2004
The Guardian
Ian Katz

The Last Post

One week ago Clark County was just another county in Ohio. Then came a campaign to pair Guardian readers with its undecided voters and suddenly the world knew its name. G2's editor, Ian Katz, looks back on seven days of email spleen, air-mailed letters, media frenzy and dodgy dentistry and asks: were we right?

Blimey. I think I have an idea as to how Dr Frankenstein felt. By the beginning of this week, a quixotic idea dreamed up last month in a north London pub had morphed into a global media phenomenon complete with transatlantic outrage, harrumphing over journalistic ethics, grave political predictions - and thousands of people from every corner of the planet writing personal, passionate letters to voters in a tiny American district few outside Ohio had heard of 10 days ago.

I realised just how much momentum our project to match concerned non-Americans with voters in a marginal US county had acquired when I arrived in Shanghai on Sunday to be handed a message from a local reporter. I rang back expecting a few desultory questions about why a group of Guardian journalists were visiting China but the reporter had a bigger story in her sights: "Is it possible to make interview about Operation Clark County?" (There was no sign in her voice of the mild irony with which we had chosen the project's quasi-military name.) When I rang a colleague in London the next morning to tell him about the strangely surreal encounter, he reported that he had just said goodbye to a crew from Japanese TV. CNN were on their way.

It's been like that for the best part of a week: Canadian newspapers, Irish radio, US TV networks. Fox has been frothing. Rush Limbaugh has been raving. A quick Google search as I write this produces the Washington Post wondering, "Can the Brits swing Ohio?", and the New York Times reporting, in unusually demotic voice, "British Two Cents Draws, in Sum, a Two-Word Reply: Butt Out". Elsewhere, detailing the robust response to our campaign, the Arab News in Saudi Arabia asks gravely: "Can the 'special' US-UK relationship survive?".

Even before the Springfield News Sun of Clark County splashed our campaign across its front page (the paper's charming crime correspondent was assigned to the story because, "There was no crime in the county today"), it was pretty clear that we had touched off something bigger than we had anticipated. In the first 24 hours after we published details of the campaign, more than 4,000 people visited our website to be matched with a Clark County voter. A day later the figure had reached 7,000, and by this Sunday, when the site was attacked by a (presumably politically inspired) hacker, we had sent out the names of more than 14,000 undecided voters. Not all of them will be acquiring foreign penpals; rightwing bloggers have been urging Republicans to sign up themselves, and prevent names falling into the hands of Euroweenie leftists. But extrapolating from the hundreds of people who have gone to the trouble of copying us their letters, it's a good bet that several thousand will.

The letters have made rather stirring reading - sensitive, thoughtful and warm, if occasionally prone to propaganda, too. "I'm a cartographer who specialises in digital mapping," began one Welsh correspondent. "Parts of the US are almost as familiar to me as Wales. It's a small country but it was the ancestral home of 18 out of the 56 delegates who signed your Declaration of Independence." Another, from Leicester, wrote: "Please forgive this intrusion. I am writing to you because I care about America a great deal. Let me tell you why. I lived and worked in the USA for 22 years. My dearest friends are American and some of my best memories are of July 4 parties, Memorial Day picnics, and the Thanksgiving feasts partaken with the welcoming families of friends. I close my eyes and I still see the woods and lakes of Connecticut."

At first the letters came almost exclusively from Britain but as word spread, our inbox began to look more and more like a UN telephone directory. In one of those bits of casual alliteration to which journalists are prone, I had introduced the project with the suggestion that it would offer a way for "people from Basildon to Botswana to campaign in the presidential race". Suddenly, they were. "My country is a new democracy," wrote a South African. "When we set about building our nation from the ruins of apartheid, we looked long and hard at the lessons the people of the USA have learned from more than 200 years of self-government and democracy." From Chile came this: "As someone who has lived in the United States and loves it dearly, events over the recent years have caused great concern to many of us in the world." They kept coming, from Norway, and Germany, and Morocco, and Australia, and Uruguay, and Sweden, and Singapore, and China, and Brazil, and Italy, and, yes, France, too.

Then came the backlash. We had expected it, of course. Fox-viewing America was never going to embrace our modest sortie into US politics and we knew full well that any individual voter might take exception to the idea of a foreigner writing to offer some advice on how they should vote - our website explicitly urged participants to "imagine how you would feel if you received a letter from an American urging you to vote for Tony Blair ... or Michael Howard." But you couldn't fail to be a little shocked by the volume and pitch of the invective directed our way. Most of it was coordinated by a handful of resourceful bloggers - the ringleader of whom is fittingly published on a site called "spleenville" - and much of it was eye-wateringly unpleasant. "I hope your earholes turn to arseholes and shit on your shoulders," was one, more repeatable example of the scatalogical genre. Another memorable mail asked:

"How secure is your building that contains all you morons???

Do you have enough security??

ARE YOU SURE ??? Are you VERY sure ??"

Interestingly, one of the recurrent themes running through the onslaught was an ardent admiration for Tony Blair from the kind of people who might feel slightly out of place in even the biggest of New Labour big tents. Another was a curious obsession with the state of British dentistry: "MAY YOU HAVE TO HAVE A TOOTH CAPPED. I UNDERSTAND IT TAKES AT LEAST 18 MONTHS FOR YOUR GREAT MEDICAL SERVICES TO GET AROUND TO YOU." At times, it felt as though whole swathes of America had suffered an epidemic of Tourette syndrome.

So far, so bad. The email onslaught was pretty unpleasant and inconvenient for the 53 Guardian colleagues whose addresses were targeted by the rightwing spammers - several of us received more than 700 mails - but by and large they were the sort of missives that left you feeling relieved you were not on the same side of the argument (indeed, any argument) as the sender. The same could be said of the news this week that Rush Limbaugh had devoted virtually all of one of his three-hour shows to our Clark County project. But a much smaller number of responses demanded to be taken more seriously. Some of them, a trifle portentously, questioned whether something such as the Clark County project is an appropriate thing for a newspaper to be doing at all. Others, a small but increasing number of Democrats among them, suggested that our campaign could be dangerously counterproductive. Americans don't like being told what to do, the argument went. If a load of foreigners write telling the voters of Clark County to vote Kerry, they are liable to do precisely the opposite. Or, as Sharon Manitta, spokeswoman in Britain for Democrats Abroad, put it with preternatural confidence: "This will certainly garner more votes for George Bush." Yikes.

It's not as if we didn't consider the possibility that our project might have precisely the opposite effect to that intended. The feature introducing the project included notes of caution from Manitta's colleague, Rachelle Valladares, and a University of Columbia professor. It's just that we didn't believe it. For one thing, it seemed unlikely that our campaign would ever reach a scale that would have any real impact on the election, one way or another. For another, it seemed spectacularly patronising to suggest that the people of Clark County would be so volatile that they would vote one way simply because an individual several thousand miles away had suggested they do the opposite.

Finally, there was the special nature of the Anglo-American relationship. I suppose it might be possible, after that nasty business in the run up to the Gulf war, to imagine a less internationally minded American voter taking umbrage at the very idea of receiving a letter from a Frenchman, but aren't we the staunchest and most longstanding of allies? Surely a letter from a concerned Brit would be received more like a plea from an old friend. (And surely it was important that Americans, who have been reminded repeatedly during this campaign of Tony Blair's legitimising support for George Bush's Iraqi adventure, should know that a majority of the British public did not share their prime minister's analysis of world affairs.)

Well, it's true that we may have underestimated the number of people willing to put pen to paper and shell out 47p for an airmail stamp, and it's true, too, that one or two residents of Clark County may get a letter from a cheese-eating surrender monkey, but I would still bet my last €10 that none of them will make their election decision by reversing whatever our long-distance lobbyists suggest. Consider the first reports of Clark County residents receiving Guardian-inspired letters. "When Dawn Brink went to her mailbox and found a letter from Germany, she was surprised because she knows no one from there," relates the Springfield News Sun. "When she opened it, she was even more surprised to find someone asking her to vote for Kerry. "It caught me off guard," she said. "But I'm always open to listening to other points of view." And here's James Chapman, who got a letter from a woman in Yorkshire on Saturday: "She said it was an important election and asked me to vote for Kerry. It was very nicely written." Chapman already planned to vote for Kerry so the letter was pushing at an open door. Two other residents were less thrilled by their missives but did not think anyone would vote differently as a result of them.

As for the question of whether any newspaper should be attempting to influence a foreign election in the first place, I'm torn between answering, "Yes," and, "Puleeeeeese". Yes, because I can't see any qualitative distinction between what newspapers have always done without controversy - attempt to sway the few foreign readers they have with leaders urging them to back one candidate or another - and our Clark County project. Some time in the next 10 days or so, the Guardian will run one urging its American readers - several million of them now, thanks to the long arm of the internet - to back John Kerry. In what way is Operation Clark County any more than an inventive way of empowering individuals to do the same?

Puleeeese, because we're in danger of taking all this too seriously. It's always tricky, and usually disingenuous, to suggest when something has been taken very seriously indeed, that actually it was all a bit of a joke. Operation Clark County was not a joke, but neither was it entirely po-faced - it was a lighthearted attempt to make some quite serious points. There were plenty of clues to its intended spirit in the feature which launched it. The cover, among other things, featured a bumper sticker "Kentish Town for Kerry" - a gentle joke at our own expense, given the London district's reputation as the heartland of Britain's liberal chattering classes. The introduction to the project itself, meanwhile, began: "Where others might see delusions of grandeur, we saw an opportunity for public service ..."

Somewhere along the line, though, the good-humoured spirit of the enterprise got lost in translation. It's easier perhaps for British readers to recognise that a project launched in G2 - the same section which sought to save Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith by persuading him to pose in front of a poster which read, "It rained less under the Conservatives" - was not to be taken in deadly earnest. Reading some American correspondence, you might believe that the editor of the Guardian himself was secreted in a subterranean war room plotting George Bush's demise.

Oddly, it seems that it is the folks in Clark County itself who have best recognised the spirit of the enterprise. Local media coverage has been consistently fair and good humoured. Even the spokesman for Ohio's Bush-Cheney campaign replied to the first query about our effort with a wry reference to the events of 1776: "The last time the Brits tried to persuade us to do something, we started a revolution." Nevertheless it feels as if the time has come to let the good people of the county make their minds up in peace. Since sending a Guardian delegation to the county in the last week of the campaign would be bound to prolong the media brouhaha, with unknowable consequences, and since some of the mail we have received brings to mind the old joke about unenviable holidays (first prize one week, second prize two weeks), we have decided that our competition winners will be watching the last days of the campaign from another, more tranquil, corner of the American electoral battlefield.

We set out to get people talking and thinking about the impact of the US election on citizens of other countries, and that is what we have done. For the Guardian to have experienced such a backlash to an editorial project is extraordinary, but the number of complaints are thoroughly outdone by the number of people who engaged positively with the project. What other lessons can we draw from Operation Clark County? I guess we will have to wait till November 3 to find out for sure, but here's a provisional stab: there are a huge number of people around the world who are profoundly dismayed by the prospect of another four years of a Bush White House and who are desperate for a way to do something about it; Guardian readers are a reassuringly engaged, resourceful and largely charming bunch; parts of America have become so isolationist that even the idea of individuals receiving letters from foreigners is enough to give politicians the collywobbles and, perhaps, in the digital age little acorns can turn into big trees very, very quickly.

Got to run now - the Finnish local elections are coming up on Sunday.

America, let us love you again ...

We asked for copies of your letters to the voters of Clark County, and they arrived in their droves. Read a selection of the best - and don't miss Ian Katz on the Guardian's unique experiment

Thursday October 21, 2004
The Guardian

Dear Clark County voter

From Phil Mountain, Casnewydd, Wales

I'm a cartographer who specialises in digital mapping. Parts of the US are almost as familiar to me as Wales. It's a small country but it was the ancestral home of 18 out of the 56 delegates who signed your Declaration of Independence. There are, however, more substantial historical connections which link me and my family to the United States.

My great-great-grandfather and his brother left Wales in the 1890s and settled in Cambrian County, Pennsylvania; your neighbouring state. Later, an elder brother of my grandfather enlisted in the US Navy. In December 1941, as a Lieutenant Commander, he was stationed at Pearl Harbor where he was wounded during the Japanese attack. He's buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Oahu. Another of his brothers was lost at sea when the ship in which he was sailing was torpedoed by a U-boat in the Atlantic en route between North America and Europe.

So somewhere in the US I have relatives, perhaps more than I have here at home, a story which will be echoed many times throughout Europe. One thing is certain: we are all grateful for the individual sacrifices made by American families in the two world wars; our families have shared in those sacrifices in defence of liberty. We therefore have a close, sometimes personal, interest in how the world's foremost democracy conducts its affairs and presents itself to the world.

However, we are now engaged in the wrong war for the wrong reasons and we were both lied to. Our family have a direct involvement. My youngest cousin, who unlike his brother, father and grandfather joined the army instead of going to sea, is a sergeant in the Queen's Dragoon Guards, an armoured regiment, and has served in both wars in Iraq. Brave people like him and his American counterparts should not be sacrificed because of the mendacity of our leaders. I'm sure many American families feel the same. It is also clear that organisations and individuals intimately connected to the Republican party and the president are making a lot of money off the back of this conflict. It looks to an outsider as if the temple of democracy is being abandoned to the moneylenders.

On both sides of the Atlantic, my family have been miners and mariners, they were hard-working people who suffered much privation but their sacrifices and determination made our lives easier. I'm afraid that President Bush is taking us back to those often grim times. If you and I disagree and my letter has caused offence, I apologise again and close with the words of one of your greatest presidents, Thomas Jefferson: "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." I hope reason prevails.

From Tom O'Donnell, Dorset

Please, change the world by changing the man in the White House.

From Maria Celina McCall, Uruguay

I remember sitting in my junior high school classroom in November 1963, when a nun came in to call us to the chapel to pray for the president of the US who had just been shot and was fighting for his life. I remember sitting for two days watching on TV and crying like I had never cried before, just like I cried on September 11 when the twin towers collapsed.

I have loved America ever since, and it is because of this love, that I write to you today. Because I'm saddened to what is happening to America's image abroad and the hatred I see all around me.

I don't know if you are a father, but if you are old enough to vote, you may know by experience, that punishments don't lead you anywhere, and that dialogue is a better way to solve problems. Dialogue is what Mr Kerry is offering and that is what the world needs now.

I would please beg you to vote for all of us that cannot, but whose lives are affected by the decisions taken by the leader of the free world. Please vote for life and freedom.

From Mohsin Talukdar, Edinburgh

I am Mohsin Talukdar from Bangladesh, currently residing in great Britain. A non-practising Muslim by faith; although faith is very important to me, I feel comfortable believing in God and being a human being practising humanity.

I remember the US Navy coming to Bangladesh to help flood victims in the mid-80s they did a splendid job. Since then, I wondered a lot about the US. I want to visit the Statue of Liberty some day (I read the translation of the script engraved at the bottom of the statue when I was in high school, it fascinated me). It even fascinates me more now but the very thing makes the Statue of Liberty a beacon to humanity is very much threatened from outside and as well as within. That worries me a lot as a believer in humanity.

I can remember 9/11 very vividly. It seemed surreal, felt stupid, because I can't reason through, as a Muslim, how it was supposed to voice any concern that the Muslim might have.

When US forces were fighting in Afghanistan, I felt like fighting alongside them, wished them all the best from the bottom of my heart. It might not be possible for me to understand the complete impact that 9/11 had on America. I can understand one thing for sure - that the terrorist shouldn't win in any way because of what they did and are still doing. But it seems they are succeeding, they changed your law curbing fundamental rights and it seems still more to come.They succeeded in making the US deeply divided perhaps also made US somewhat distant from the rest of the world; whereas your constitution recognises being a part of the world community. That's why I fail to understand when George Bush says that the US shouldn't worry about anything it does for security; well, if you have your friends neutralised that can't be much of a security!

I don't know whom you'll vote for, even if it doesn't seem right to vote for a change, but please know this, from outside it seems very much that we need your vote, America needs your vote. It's not about Kerry, Bush or Democrats, Republicans; it's about how as human beings we'll choose to deal with things.

From Marc Puttock, Leicester

I am writing to you because I care about America a great deal. Let me tell you why. I lived and worked in the USA for 22 years. My dearest friends are American and some of my best memories are of July 4th parties, Memorial Day picnics, and the Thanksgiving feasts partaken with the welcoming families of friends. I close my eyes and I still see the woods and lakes of Connecticut where I spent so much of my time.

Living in America from 1978 through to 2000 and I went through the changes along with everyone else: from the Iran-hostage crisis to the Iran-Contra scandal, the attempt on Reagan's life, the OJ Simpson verdict, the Gulf war.

All these events would be discussed around the watercooler with colleagues whether I was working in factories or in offices. Opinions were divided, discussion sometimes heated, but at no time was that essential hope dimmed and at no time did I feel a fear for the future from those with whom I spoke.

Sadly, that has altered. I started working back in the UK in 2000. With the distance that comes from separation, I would return to the US and feel the difference in attitudes following the calamitous events of the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York. It was not 9/11 that changed the American outlook however. I believe that it was the response to 9/11 by its leadership that has caused this bleakness to manifest itself in the American consciousness. The war on terrorism and the climate of fear generated from the Office of Homeland Security were used to subvert American awareness and enabled the Bush-led Republican government to pursue the war in Iraq without opposition from within.

This is why I am writing to you to ask for your help in turning the tide.

I truly believe that we all cannot afford another four years of Mr Bush being in power.

I have never done anything like this before and I, myself, might resent the intrusion in receiving a letter like this. Forgive me, then, please. My motivation is not driven by anyone else or by a pressure group, I am simply someone who misses the America that I knew and loved.

From Ilona Bossanyi, France

I'm taking the liberty of asking you, a citizen of a country built upon the principles of democracy but whose very might is in danger of disenfranchising the rest of the world, to use your right to vote, and to vote with all your heart and your mind, in your own name but also in the name of all those millions of people who will be looking to your decision in two weeks' time.

From Mark Brown, London

I don't feel entirely comfortable with writing this letter: normally I would feel to offer my opinion on another country's politics to a citizen of that country would be wrong. Yet, as a British citizen I can't help but get involved in a decision that will not only affect the people of your country but many, many others around the world, none more so than my own.

Earlier this year my father and I visited New York for a five-day break, neither of us had been before. We had a fantastic time and thought the place was truly breathtaking, yet the one thing that struck us most was the warmth and friendship shown to us everywhere we went. One night that sticks in the memory is a visit to The Boston Comedy Club in Greenwich Village. The comedian did that usual routine of asking which members of the audience weren't from New York, we ever-so-Britishly raised our hands politely and said in hushed tones we were from England. Later, drinks were sent to our table from a group in the corner, something neither of us had ever experienced nor will we forget. The kindness shown to us by everyone we encountered is probably the thing we remember most about our trip.

The unity so prominent in the days after 9/11 is now shattered, a wealth of sympathy squandered as our governments continue to lie and justify the wholly unjust crimes we have committed. World anger is rising.

On November 2 you will be asked to cast what may possibly be the most important vote of recent times. I am not asking you to vote for John Kerry nor am I asking you to vote for President Bush, all I ask is that you read this letter and consider that your vote affects us all, our future and our children's future.

From Ed Kite, Stoke-on-Trent

The American people like to see things through. What was started should be finished. Don't change the general in mid campaign!

But that's what we British did in 1940. The man who had miscalculated, Neville Chamberlain, got the boot. He whose leadership had led to a series of disasters was shown the door. A man who hitherto had been very unpopular, Winston Churchill, was given a chance. and the world knows that the future was changed forever.

To me, America is in a similar situation now.

From Stuart Riches, Bedfordshire

We are different, you and I. You are an American citizen and I am not. And yet we share the pretext that we are both citizens of the free world, living in a democracy with the opportunity to vote for our respective leaders.

I am writing to you in the hope that it may encourage you to use your vote in the forthcoming presidential election. But, why would I do this? The answer is simple, because yes, although it is a very strange thing to do, it will help me clear my own conscience with respect to the war in Iraq. You see I am one of those who, when the protests were made in London, thought about it and did not take part. I was fairly sure at the time that the war was a bad idea, but I also believed that Iraq probably did have weapons of mass destruction, and although it was not an immediate threat it probably could become one at short notice. What I believe now is very different.

I am now prepared to stand up and be counted. I hope that you will feel the same.

And from my alter-ego, "ohkneel"

Wed Oct 20 12:24 * - Subject: Revisiting "The Guardian" For Giggles and Grins

ohkneel said:

from FoxNews reporter, Jonathan Hunt.

the story about The Guardian's letter writing campaign to Clark County, Ohio, is still receiving chuckles and grins on the news.

The Guardian is the last bastion for the brie-nibbling, chardonnay-swilling, champagne-sipping, dwindling socialist elite in Britain who feel they lost "The Empire". since they have little to no influence over their own party or government, they had to feel as if they had it somewhere. The Guardian is a quirky, rather bizarre paper, which still mourns the loss of the Soviet Union.

my take? living proof that no one is completely useless, they can always serve as a bad example. The Guardian is dedicated to exposing the ravings of a particular group of elitist, blasé, sophisticated, grown-up infantiles of the British bourgeoisie.

Wed Oct 20 18:38 ~ - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
naughty said:
i loveeeee your posts..

Wed Oct 20 15:38 ~ - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
Johnny Reb said:
Lucius C. Sulla you could always try Highlights For Children. It has lots of big colorful pictures and even has little puzzles where you look for hidden items. When you get good at that then you can begin to look for the hidden agenda in the Kerry campaign.

Wed Oct 20 15:32 * - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
Lucius C. Sulla said:
I still haven't been told what the world's prime news source is. CAn't be the BBC, because they are all gay communists. Might be the bible, but their breaking news page is a little slow. It can't be GWB, because I can't understand a word he says in the bastardised version of English he speaks. And Uncle Bub from the petrol station on Louisiana is too far away, besides last time I went he was busy with his nephew.

Wed Oct 20 15:25 ~ - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
DarkFantasy said:
ohkneel...
yes, giggles and grins at the guardian...
but, the real question is which is funnier or more supercilious...?
the guardian or Lucius C. Sulla?
Wasn't Sulla a star in the Python, Upper Class Twit of the Year schetches...?

Wed Oct 20 15:19 * - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
Lucius C. Sulla said:
My dear, I haven't even started yet. How's the Celine Dion CD and the flock wallpaper? Hope you're having a lovely evening!

Wed Oct 20 15:17 * - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
ohkneel said:
Lucius C. Sulla:

typical left wing tactics: ignore the facts and smear the opposition as outrageously as possible.
*tossing in a half-smile, which, of course, is indicative of your wit*

Wed Oct 20 14:22 ~ - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
Lord Mikhail said:
The Guardian...
one of the few papers who's contents improve when used to line bird cages.

Wed Oct 20 14:17 ~ - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
Visitorini said:
laughs..

Wed Oct 20 14:14 * - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
ohkneel said:
*rippling tides of lilting laughter, singing along so easily*
lessa-sweet. *shaking my finger at you with semi-slitted eyes* you're so right!

*BOL*

Wed Oct 20 14:06 ~ - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
lessa said:
laffin'...
let's all do...The Guardian Hokey Pokey!

You put Your nose right in...
You get those views right out...
you put your two cents in...
and then you scream and jump about...
you do the best you can ...
to fix a yank's wrong choice...
that's what it's all about...

okay i know...
juvenile...
what can i say? i like to play sometimes!
giggles...

Wed Oct 20 13:15 * - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
ohkneel said:
Lucius C. Sulla:
typical left wing tactics: ignore the facts and smear the opposition as outrageously as possible.

Wed Oct 20 13:12 * - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
Lucius C. Sulla said:
What a load of silly nonsense, you are referring to the Telegraph, our most rightwing broadsheet newspaper which is highly critical of the situation in Iraq, and of Blair, combined with a disgusted of Tunbridge Wells approach to anything resembling homosexuality etc etc.

Wed Oct 20 13:04 ~ - Subject: * - 0 reaction(s)
lessa said:
tee~hee...
ohkneel...you are are an inspiration! i wish i had your research and writing skills...