Election snafus in Florida have outraged segments of the electorate who feel disenfranchised. This is nothing new to PNS correspondent Andres Tapia, who grew up in Lima, Peru and still votes in elections there. Tapia sees the U.S. electorate's encounter with the unfamiliar "vulnerabilities" of their electoral process as a bracing, and ultimately positive, experience. Tapia writes on Latin America and Latino immigrant issues.

CHICAGO -- Last April I voted in a nail-biting, closely contested presidential election. That evening and in the days following, I and millions of my compatriots anxiously watched as the vote count trickled in amid accusations of flawed ballots and registered voters being turned away at the polls, while thousands of votes cast for the apparent loser were invalidated.

We watched in dismay as parts of the country governed by a friend of the leading candidate showed the greatest number of incredulous snafus that systematically undermined the losing candidate.

That was the Peruvian election.

Last Tuesday I voted in the U.S. presidential election, which I can do as a dual U.S.-Peruvian citizen. Casting my ballot at my Chicago suburb's firehouse station, and sporting a shiny "I Voted Today" sticker, I fully expected a stark contrast between the two elections. Instead it was Yogi Berra's "deja vu all over again."

Bleary-eyed on Wednesday morning, I kept staring at the TV in a surrealistic haze. No winner. A recount. Some 19,000 ballots likely cast for the barely trailing Gore thrown out. All happening in a state governed by the winning candidate's brother.

It took five days to declare incumbent President Alberto Fujimori the winner in the Peruvian election. But many of us felt stripped of our civic dignity because the official result did not reflect the majority's choice. And now, here in the self-proclaimed bastion of democracy, I'm disturbingly feeling the same disenfranchisement.

As hard as it was feeling this in the Peruvian election, it's more disturbing experiencing it here. In Peru we have been conditioned by our on-again, off-again democracy and a couple dozen short-lived constitutions to not rely on democracy as a given. Twenty years of uninterrupted democracy was starting to feel disconcertingly normal. Similar to what adult children of alcoholics can attest to, a little chaos is somewhat comforting in its familiarity.

But it's supposed to be different here. As I grew up bicultural in Peru, my U.S. mom would extol to me the moral superiority of American democracy. But visiting my U.S. grandparents in a farming community in Washington State, I was perplexed by the dispassionate, matter-of-fact attitude Americans had toward elections. In Peru it's against the law not to vote. Here it one's choice. I watched with disbelief the numbers of people who chose not to exercise that right increase over the years. How could that be?

Now I see how much one's political passion gets lit by what is at stake. In Peru, with the military always lurking as the shadow power and with multiple viable political parties with diametrically opposing ideologies, everything seemed to be at stake at every election.

One president would give the finger to the international banking community, a policy that nearly wrecked our economy when in the end those very same institutions said, "Fine, no credit." Another president would lay down an aggressive antisubversion policy that led to the disappearance and torture of thousands. Another would bring the military's displeasure and the threat of a takeover. Whether we had sugar, imported cornflakes, the freedom to go out late at night to party, or to criticize our leaders publicly, always hinged on who won.

We had to care. But at the same time the system played with us, often making a mockery of the very process that we so much depended on for our futures and livelihood.

Until this week Americans in the mainstream had been immune to the vulnerabilities of the democratic process. Suddenly they are sounding as passionate about politics as we have been in Peru where politics is an additional course at every dinner. It's unfamilar yet refreshing to hear the restless din of politics in this nation's cafeterias, elevators and grocery stores. Regardless of one's political affiliation we're all affected by the unresolved outcome. Democratic anxiety is actually a good community-building experience, which I have missed here.

As Peruvians pine for a democratic process that truly belongs them, this unprecedented U.S. election outcome could end up re-energizing a largely apathetic electorate to rediscover the creative power of the participatory democracy they have exported around the world.