Before the polls were even closed, international observers were reporting problems with access to voting stations in Florida.
“To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler,” Konrad Olszewski, an election observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told the International Herald Tribune. “They have one national election law and use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system.”
Two-member observer teams have fanned out across 11 states and include citizens of 36 countries, ranging from Canada and Switzerland to Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia and Belarus.
Formation of the U.S. election mission came after the State Department issued a standard letter on June 9 inviting the group to monitor the election.
The foreign election monitors invited to observe the 2004 presidential elections by Secretary of State Colin Powell are not the only members of an international delegation in the U.S. for the purpose of examining the political process in action this fall.
The Vienna-based OSCE, a 55-nation body that encourages all member countries to observe each others’ elections. Another group, invited by the San Francisco activist group “Global Exchange,” is deployed in five states watching for evidence of “disenfranchisement.”
The five states include Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Missouri and Georgia, according to Global Exchange. Florida was selected due to the controversy that erupted there in the 2000 elections; Georgia because it is one of only two states where voters will use only touch-screen voting machines. Arizona was picked because elections there are publicly financed, while Missouri was the scene of widespread reports of Republican efforts to suppress the black vote in 2000. Ohio also was of interest because it is expected to be one of the most hotly contested battleground states in this year’s election.
State Department officials stressed that the OSCE delegation did not have the authority to assess the fairness of the vote.
The invitation drew praise from more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers who had asked U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to dispatch observers to the November elections earlier this summer.
In a letter to Annan, which the U.N. subsequently referred back to Powell, the lawmakers said they were concerned about the possibility of irregularities in the 2004 balloting.
“Given the deeply troubling events of the 2000 election, the growing concerns about the lack of necessary reforms and potential abuse in the 2004 election,” the lawmakers wrote, “we believe that the engagement of international election monitors can be the catalyst to expedite the necessary reform, as well as reduce the likelihood of questionable practices and voter disenfranchisement on Election Day.”
The congressional initiative to bring in foreign observers was spearheaded by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas. She asked Powell to make an official request that the U.N. provide observers for the Nov. 2 elections in the United States to “ensure free and fair elections.”
Previously, the 13 Democratic congressmen, led by Johnson, sent a letter July 8 to the U.N. general secretary requesting the presence of U.N. representatives in every county of the country during the voting process and any vote recount afterward.
The U.N. immediately responded that such a request could not be accepted unless it came from the U.S. government. Otherwise, a spokesman said, it could be considered “intervention in a country’s sovereignty.”
Besides Johnson, the congressional signers to the original U.N. letters included Julia Carson of Indiana, Jerrold Nadler, Edolphus Towns, Joseph Crowley and Carolyn B. Maloney, all of New York, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Corrine Brown of Florida, Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, Danny K. Davis of Illinois, and Michael M. Honda and Barbara Lee of California.
The Washington Times reported the European election monitors touring Florida were dismayed yesterday at their local hosts’ emphasis on Democratic events, saying their schedule of pro-Kerry and left-leaning themes left little time for similar Republican visits.
The team listened to controversial filmmaker Michael Moore address the League of Conservation Voters and visited a polling station where voting irregularities were reported during the 2000 election.
Belgian lawmaker Bart Tommelein said the team was “dismayed” they missed a Bush campaign rally.
“We are neutral, you know, and we really should be spending more time with the other side.”
Earlier stories:
Foreign election observers arrive in U.S.
Bush invites foreigners to monitor elections
Renewed push for U.N. to monitor U.S. vote
