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European team due to observe US election
via Miami Herald Reg Req - EFLLogin: herald@miami.com / bogus1 The State Department has invited an international team to observe the presidential election in November, prompting a group of liberal Democrats in Congress to claim partial victory in what last month grew into a nasty partisan battle. The notion of calling in international election observers, usually reserved for fledgling democracies and Third-World hot spots, drew harsh debate last month in Congress, after 13 House Democrats wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and also asked the State Department to request U.N. monitors. The Democrats said they want to avoid a repeat of 2000, when problems with voter rolls, ballot designs and recount standards in Florida left the outcome to the courts and gashed the nation's trust in fair elections. Republicans labeled the request a political stunt, coming in the wake of "Fahrenheit 9/11," the Michael Moore documentary that presented President Bush's election victory as a farce. Only the executive branch can make a formal request for U.N. monitors. Paul V. Kelly, a State Department assistant secretary, responded to the Democrats in a letter dated July 30 that was released Thursday. Ignoring the U.N. issue, Kelly said the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had been invited to send a team to observe. "It's a step in the right direction," said The OSCE, based in Poland, includes the United States among its 55 members and has sent teams to observe more than 150 elections in Europe and elsewhere, said Urdur Gunnarsdottir, spokeswoman for its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. She said a team would arrive in September to consider how many observers to deploy, and where. "We don't have any authority. We don't give them a yes or a no, or grade them," said Gunnarsdottir. "But we monitor, we publicize what we see. You can call it political pressure." The OSCE sent a tiny team of 13 to observe congressional elections in 2002 and assess reforms made since the constitutional crisis of 2000. The group gave a largely favorable assessment. This time, a full-fledged team of 100 or more would likely be dispatched, she said. "We have access to all the voting stations, the counting, the tabulation," she said. "We have a lot of experience in this." U.N. monitors would have no authority to alter elections in the United States, experts say, but their findings would likely hold greater political weight. Their presence here could also invite ridicule. Last month, Republicans stonewalled the bid for U.N. monitors. Raising the specter of U.N. officials in blue helmets swarming polling stations, Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., won an amendment to the 2005 foreign aid bill barring U.S. funds from being used for U.N. monitoring of American elections. In a statement Thursday, Buyer said, "I welcome any outside entity to observe our electoral process, but I oppose what House Democrats asked, which was for the U.N. to come assess the validity of our elections." Lee insisted that she and other Democrats would keep pushing. "This isn't done yet," she said.
"It saddens people to see the suspicion that's just pervasive in both parties over the conduct of their upcoming elections," said Susan MacManus, a government professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "The group I feel the most for are the honest local election officials who are just trying to get the job done, but every day there's another layer to deal with," she said. "It's like somebody's watching you and waiting for you to fall." It says the invite is from the State Dept, but I'll wager it came from Rove, lol!
Posted by: .com 2004-08-07 |
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