But I find any attempt to influence the vote in a country where I don't live, and have no plans to live in, despicable.

But isn't the very act of posting here and discussing these sort of issues potentially a way of influencing the way Americans might vote? And the same goes for an editorial or a letter in a newspaper that is available online. The only way to avoid influencing the vote would be to maintain a vow of slence, and pretend there wasn't an election going on. And even that would in itself be likely to have some kind of influence.

What's wrong about this Guardian stunt is that it's clumsy, and quite likely to affect voting intentions in a perverse fashion. It'll be a bit sick if America and the world gets saddled with Bush, in a neck and neck election, just because a few people in Clark County got irritated at getting these letters. And all because the editor of the Guardian thought this seemed a jolly funny idea, that might gain a few readers, and tease a few Yanks into blowing their tops.