Dear American from a marginal county in a marginal state,

[Tareeq]

This is the sort of bright idea that could only occur to an intellectual.

It works like this. By typing your email address into the box on this page, you will receive the name and address of a voter in Clark County, Ohio. You may not have heard of it, but it's one of the most marginal areas in one of the most marginal states: at the last election, just 324 votes separated Democrats from Republicans. It's a place where a change of mind among just a few voters could make a real difference.

Writing to a Clark County voter is a chance to explain how US policies effect [sic] you personally, and the rest of the world more generally, and who you hope they will send to the White House. It may even persuade someone to use their vote at all.

I hate to paint a stereotype of Guardian readers, because I am one. But if I am a Guardian reader, who better to do it?

A touch elitist.

Did the Guardian consider the impact of thousands of earnest graduate students, professors, activists, and other fops letter-bombing Springfield, Ohio with their opinions about Kyoto and American hegemony before they published this?

Dear American from a marginal area in a marginal state,

Did it occur to them that people in this marginal area have access to the internet?

Early reactions are mixed.

[$iljanus]

I do say that England's neglect of good dental hygene sure isn't helping things any from some of the letters I've read.

Very entertaining!

[Chrisoc13]

Thats disgusting to me. I agree with the letter that said if they want to influence our election, move to the US. In the long run, this is going to backfire on them, since it most obviously will be trying to help kerry. Anyone who gets it is going to be polarized against him. Not a smart move really.

Plus, foreign policy is not the major concern in this election. Most americans think it is domestic issues, just as always. So other countries should have zero say on it.

The letter that best fit for me was this one:

Shame on you for using the people of Ohio like this. The US presidental election isn't just about foreign policy, it's about healthcare, taxes, education, transportation, natural resources and all manner of issues with little to no impact on the people of Britain.

We live in a globalised, interconnected world. If China shuts its borders to US imports, you better believe American companies, shareholders and workers are affected. Should US citizens therefore have a direct say in Chinese policies? No - Americans should demand that their own elected leaders address the issues with their Chinese counterparts. The British have a similar voice in US policies - through your own elected representatives who have any number of diplomatic, economic and military tools at their disposal. You vote for your leaders and we'll vote for ours. Your problem is with your leaders, not ours.
Washington DC

This is exactly how I feel on the matter.

The letters are funnyto read, my favorites were the ones about the revolution. A good laugh, and exactly the response I would have expected. But this one was my favorite:

My dear, beloved Brits,
I understand the Guardian is sponsoring a service where British citizens write to Americans to advise them on how to vote. Thank heavens! I was adrift in a sea of confusion and you are my beacon of hope!

Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don't use big, fancy words.

Set me straight, folks!
Dayton, Ohio

[Mr. Fed]

A few points.

1. The whole British dentition thing is getting to be the newest French-cowardice-and-military-incompetence meme. Is it fair? Well, probably about as fair as the humungously-fat-American-in--too-tight-clothes meme. But funnier.

2. Everyone jaws about everyone else's election. Look at all the teeth-gnashing and breast-beating that happened here when Spaniards voted out their government shortly after a terrorist attack (as near as I could tell, mostly on the theory that if you don't change your intended vote to support a government the terrorists don't like, the terrorists have won. In other words, roughly the same mindset that led me to eat veal every night for a week after a vegetarian chick dumped me.)

3. That said, the Guardian -- and many critics of America -- have an absolute tin ear for the tone of their criticism. It IS insufferably condescending. There ARE undertones of socioeconomic class and good old British actual class. It DOES seem almost calculated to drive more people to Bush than it drives away. But there's a cultural disconnect -- not just the British/American cultural gulf, but the gulf between the chattering classes and the people who, to use a judgmental term, work for a living.

(The insensitivity to tone and, for want of a better word, manners reminds me of a number of U.S. papers. Remember when Dale Earnhart died and the New York Times started a very earnest story with a line like "There was silence at Wal-Mart" without any apparent self-awareness of how it sounded?

[Tareeq]

1. The whole British dentition thing is getting to be the newest French-cowardice-and-military-incompetence meme.

Nothing's new about it. Jokes about British choppers are as old as fluoridated American tap water.

Is it fair?

If calling a spade a spade is fair, it's fair. A vignette: The wife did a year at a university in Wales before we were married. She went to a dentist on the charming island of Anglesey to have tooth cleaning six months in. Her dentist remarked that she'd have known Megan was American even if they'd never spoken, due to the condition of her teeth.

That was not meant as a compliment to British teeth.

[Padre]

A British perspective on this one...

It's a ridiculous idea that was never going to go down well, it's patronising in the extreme, and I'm amazed it managed to get published.

That said, we have our reasons for taking such an interest in the US election. The policies of America affect us pretty powerfully over here, especially as no politician in this country has the balls to stand up to any American governemnt, Republican or Democratic. Our foreign policy is largely determined by the POTUS for this reason.

And it does make me shudder sometimes (particulrly reading the vitriol in that comments link) the extent to which some Americans seem to believe that their actions happen within a bubble -- that they can be isolationist islanders that don't have to deal with the rest of the world. They can't.

Like it or not, America is the world's one superpower and has a de facto empire that spans the globe.

So we all feel like we have a stake in the outcome, although we can't control it. That's what leads to silly bullshit like this.