Berlin - Three American exchange students did little to enhance the credibility of their country's voting system by failing miserably to count the number of chairs in the auditorium on a German television game show.
In a less-than-subtle dig at the United States' failure to produce a president-elect after almost a week of recounts, host Thomas Gottschalk on Saturday gave the three students an hour to count the seats - and got answers ranging from 1,860 to 2,077. It may have been only a game show, but there was plenty of gloating yesterday in the country that gave the world the word Schadenfreude. The mass-circulation daily Bild could not resist reminding readers how Republican candidate Mr George Bush accused his Democratic opponent, Mr Al Gore, of using "fuzzy math" in his campaign assertions.
The daily Die Welt simply added: "Americans can't count."