AP Photo

In April, while Americans were obsessing about President Obama's first 100 days, people in countries around the world were going to the polls to vote for their own kind of change. Writers in India, Indonesia and South Africa to report on their recent Election Days — as well as the mornings after.

ON Thursday morning, my neighbors and I joined an orderly line in front of the election desk at the end of our street. We did what the public-service ads had been urging us to do for weeks: “Give them the finger.” The polling officer didn’t even raise her head. After dipping a plastic straw into a bottle of purple ink, she drew a blotchy line down the middle finger of my left hand. Then I stepped up to the voting machine to press a button in India’s 15th...