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Look:

These same people monitored the 2002 elections and the findings were that 87% of voters had no problems at all. I read that Albanians were in one of the northern Midwestern states. I hope it was South Dakota, but I don't recall. It did not impair our sovereignty.

This is not a betrayal. Every country participating in the monitoring is a western-style democracy. They can see w/their own eyes how the electorate behaves and how voting is done and they will talk to their anti-American media. This is international relations at its highest level, short circuiting the *fraud* and *stolen votes* claims.

In 2000, the world saw our system work. No Constitutional Crisis, as they all predicted, but a legal remedy, even if it was contentious.

Every nation on earth has vote fraud problems. We do, too. By bringing in allies, we open our system to the light of day. No one can say that Republicans are intimidating voters w/international observers. Hordes of people w/video cameras ARE intimidating. W/PhotoShop and other programs, any film record may be altered to show anything at all.

While we will have poll watchers from our party and lawyers on call in case of problems, in all-Donk precincts, we get accused of being troublemakers and voting is held up and made impossible by the Donks at every turn.

Even with the fraud problems, the majority of precincts have no problems at all. In mine, we still use pencils and paper and 6-8 people work the polls at any given time. In one local school referendum election, we had a dispute over one vote that decided the issue. The voter had changed their vote and the erasure was incomplete, making it a spoiled ballot w/2 visible votes on it. A citizen paid for an attorney and the voting was redone by court decision. This time, the election was decided, again by the one vote.

If Bush had said no to observers this time, after having them in last time, the Donks would be screaming. This way, he just waited for them to grandstand and then re-invited the observers. This shuts up the Donks, but the observers are not in their pocket.

If you want to give up your franchise, that is your decision. But the administration is far more subtle than the Donks and the observers are not going to harm anything at all, just as they didn't harm anything in 2002, when the Republicans won massively at all levels of government, all across the country and there were no outcries of stolen elections, except for South Dakota around the Indian reservations. Note we belong to this organization and there wil be Americans with each group.

Rather than sit home and sulk in high dudgeon, why not take the day off and volunteer thru the campaign for poll watching. Do it now, so you can get the training. Then, you can watch the international observers, yourself and see just what *betrayal* does or doesn't take place.You can vote absentee if you get your ballot in time.

I am not going to dispute your post point by point. However, the example of a local election and using our courts was excellent. That is the American way.

I glanced back at a thread regarding the Democrats call for UN observers and the outrage felt by Republicans and conservatives on this site. There were over 200 hits denouncing this.

Now, since GW Bush has called them foreign observers is it OK? Go to the UN website and click on human rights then search for ODIHR or OCSE. Both of theses organizations are UN organizations. Bush just didn't go to the main body of the UN. He went to the organizations of the UN that specialize in elections. It is still the UN.