Juan Cole....

....makes a fool of himself again. Armed Liberal quotes the good professor complaining about the upcoming Iraqi elections — "The Iraqi people are being asked to vote for party lists or coalition lists...but they most often don't know which politicians are running. I think it's a little bit absurd to call that an election."

Armed liberal then posts a picture of a party ticket from the 1800's in America and points out

It's a party 'ticket', one of the original paper ballots used up to the 19th Century here in the United States. Voters would drop the 'ticket' into the ballot box, and choosing a ticket was that way one voted.

I'll skip over the history in the urban East Coast, where political machines like Tammany used ties with immigrant groups to induce them to vote for candidates whose names they couldn't read, and simply suggest that the 'blanket' or 'Australian' ballot - one that listed all the candidates for a party and allowed the voter to select one - wasn't implemented in the US until very late in the 19th Century.

...I could recommend some history books for the Professor, if he'd like.

I'm not sure it would do any good. If he hasn't absorbed this information by now, he's not gonna.