Posted on 09/10/2004 6:55:44 PM PDT by daddydoo
What has become of all the talk about oversight of our elections?
We give you the bomb.
Love always, the UN
To me, it is more of a non-story. If anything, the Democrats voter fraud is more likely to get nailed than anything untoward happening.....
A Local Call for Election Oversight
West Side Congressman Joins Petition for Foreign Monitors of U.S. Election
By Nick Klagge
Spectator Staff Writer
September 10, 2004
"Russian Observers to Monitor US Presidential Poll," proclaimed the smug headline of an Aug. 8 article published by Russia's TASS news agency.
In response to a petition from 13 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives, among them Upper West Side Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who represents part of Columbia University, the U.S. State Department invited officials from the multinational Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor America's Nov. 2 general election. Their presence will mark the first time that an American presidential election has ever been monitored by international observers.
On July 1 of this year, the group of 13 representatives -- whose members also include Edolphus Towns (D-NY) and Joseph Crowley (D-NY) -- sent a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, requesting that the United Nations send election monitors to observe the United States general election. The UN responded by saying that the request would require the approval of the Bush administration. Although the administration would not make such a request, the State Department invited monitors from the OSCE and on July 30 announced that the OSCE observers would be present in November.
The OSCE is a security organization headquartered in Vienna made up of 55 countries in Europe, North America, and Central Asia. It is concerned with a range of issues and includes a branch called the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights that is particularly concerned with democratization and electoral transparency.
The request for international monitoring was spurred by concerns about irregularities in Florida in the 2000 election and worries that those problems have not been sufficiently addressed. "We are deeply concerned that the right of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections is again in jeopardy," wrote the representatives in their letter to Annan.
Congressman Nadler is a staunch advocate of electoral reforms. He is a co-sponsor of the so-called Holt Bill, which would require a verifiable paper trail to be required for all electronic voting machines.
"He is concerned that people will be left out of the democratic process," particularly through voter-roll purges such as what happened in Florida in 2000, said Jennie McCue, Nadler's press secretary.
According to McCue, Nadler was pleasantly surprised at the State Department's invitation of OSCE observers. "The Congressman didn't expect them to make the decision" to do so, she said.
Although international monitors have never been invited to observe a U.S. presidential election in the past, the request is not entirely unprecedented. The OSCE sent observers during the 2002 midterm elections as well as during California's recent gubernatorial recall election. Furthermore, the OSCE's 1990 Copenhagen Document, signed by the George H. W. Bush administration, pledges signers to "invite observers from any other [OSCE] participating States ... to observe the course of their national election proceedings." That statement, however, has largely been considered a formality until now.
It is perhaps true that the invitation puts the United States in less-than-flattering company. In the months between now and the Nov. 2 election, the OSCE is also monitoring elections in Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and the Ukraine. But while the organization has traditionally concerned itself with voting rights in developing countries, it has recently broadened its scope to include election assistance in developed countries, overseeing elections in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Even so, the implications of the request and the presence of international observers have angered some politicians. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) blasted the invitation in the Aug. 16 edition of his weekly column, "Texas Straight Talk."
"Of course neither the OSCE nor any other international organization should have a say in how we conduct elections in the United States," he wrote. Paul went on to state that given the U.S. electoral system's reliance on the states, the federal government does not even have the right to make such a request.
Though it had previously been more concerned with fostering democracy in struggling areas like Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the OSCE took an interest in American voting procedures after the controversy of the election in Florida in 2000. Upon observing the midterm elections in 2002, the OSCE took the opportunity to monitor the success of American legal reforms designed to prevent another debacle, focusing its observation efforts almost exclusively on Florida.
In its 2002 report on the state of American elections, the OSCE said that "the 2000 presidential election revealed serious shortcomings in the administration of elections in Florida," and that while they "have been addressed to a significant degree ... room for some further improvement remains." While the organization approves of the progress made since 2000, it points out that "a number of issues remain to be addressed, including ... reform in the use of the felons list."
The felons list remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks for voting rights in Florida. Unlike most states, Florida deprives felons of their right to vote permanently, unless they apply for clemency. In 2000, according to the OSCE report, 3,000 to 4,000 citizens were wrongfully deprived of their voting rights through an inaccurate felons list.
The issue again became contentious over the past summer when it was revealed in July that the purge list of 48,000 names proposed by election officials included 22,000 African Americans, who tend to vote Democratic, and only 61 Hispanics, who tend to vote Republican in Florida. The enormous discrepancy was due to a defective method for felon identification. Furthermore, the Miami Herald estimated that over 2,000 ex-felons who had received clemency were nonetheless on the now-infamous purge list. Florida election officials soon withdrew the list, but the incident struck many as a signal that America has not solved the voting rights problems that plagued the 2000 election.
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