NationStates Jolt Archive

I remember there being a big fuss about the fact that the US presidential elections were being monitored by UN election monitors.

Does anyone remember what happened with this? Did they observe, or didn't they? And if they did observe, did they find anything to mention?

I have no idea...

I've been thinking about this as well. I remember a huge uproar about it on the conservative talk shows. (rightfully so, IMO) Then Bush came out and said he was for it and the issue went away.

haven't heard anything about it since.

I googled it and I only found stuff from the talk show uproar...

GOOD QUESTION! i really couldn't figure out why there was such a commotion over the whole thing. Seemed like a good idea to me!

GOOD QUESTION! i really couldn't figure out why there was such a commotion over the whole thing. Seemed like a good idea to me!
We need to figure this out...

Heh, good for the goose, good for the gander.

--The Democratic States of Cogitation

I've searched all the legitimate websites and search engines and found nothing.

I remember there being a big fuss about the fact that the US presidential elections were being monitored by UN election monitors.

Does anyone remember what happened with this? Did they observe, or didn't they? And if they did observe, did they find anything to mention?

They did *not* observe. The fuss came when a number of Congressmen and women (including Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, CA) made a motion to request that the UN elections monitoring program send observers in. House Republicans threw a collosal (sp?) fit. Statements were even made to talk about how inappropriate it would be to have dictatorships like France send in observers ... of course the US sends plenty of representatives to other countries, including Mexico.

All I can say is I echo what Cog said here. If the US is good enough to *send* observers to other countries, the US should have been good enough to invite observers from other countries.

In my opinion, as an election volunteer, if you are concerned about your elections the time to raise a stink is *before* the elections. Ask your county if you can work the elections and ask very specific questions how the votes are counted and by whom.

When I volunteer a public notice with my name and party affliation is published in a local paper, so that if somebody had an issue with me, they could (in theory) call the county and request that I be monitored or removed from duty. In theory ... in practice most Americans assume that that voting is a right and that somebody else will take care of everything for them. :(

p.s. having been to France and having several French friends, I can say it is a real shame when US Representatives fail to realize that France has long been an ally of the United States and is most certainly not a dictatorship ... in fact, French Democracy and American Democracy are very intertwinded and anybody making this mistake is IMO unfit to serve as an elected representative in a democractic government. Those statements really angered me.

They did *not* observe. The fuss came when a number of Congressmen and women (including Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, CA) made a motion to request that the UN elections monitoring program send observers in. House Republicans threw a collosal (sp?) fit. Statements were even made to talk about how inappropriate it would be to have dictatorships like France send in observers ... of course the US sends plenty of representatives to other countries, including Mexico.

All I can say is I echo what Cog said here. If the US is good enough to *send* observers to other countries, the US should have been good enough to invite observers from other countries.

In my opinion, as an election volunteer, if you are concerned about your elections the time to raise a stink is *before* the elections. Ask your county if you can work the elections and ask very specific questions how the votes are counted and by whom.

They didn't come? I thought that Bush invited them sometime.

first, not an expert o it. started as a political ploy of the left, but it turned out to be a pretty good idea. having the UN say it was a clean election heklps settle the leftists after the 200 debacle in florida. and i also believe what;s good for the goose is good for the gander, why not, can;t hurt. course, if the UN got snotty, we'd have to close their building and withdraw funding like a GOOD democratic country! (this is sarcasm, i hate leftist extremism, but hey, even they are right sometimes)

They didn't come? I thought that Bush invited them sometime.

I didn't think so after the fuss from before the election ...

Perhaps you are thinking not of the UN, but the following group:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/08/international.observers/

Copied here:


International team to monitor presidential election
Observers will be part of OSCE's human rights office

From David de Sola
CNN
Monday, August 9, 2004 Posted: 9:08 AM EDT (1308 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election.

"The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should," spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. "It's not legally binding, but it's a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections."

Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives, raising the specter of possible civil rights violations that they said took place in Florida and elsewhere in the 2000 election, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July, asking him to send observers.

After Annan rejected their request, saying the administration must make the application, the Democrats asked Secretary of State Colin Powell to do so.

The issue was hotly debated in the House, and Republicans got an amendment to a foreign aid bill that barred federal funds from being used for the United Nations to monitor U.S. elections, The Associated Press reported.

In a letter dated July 30 and released last week, Assistant Secretary of State Paul Kelly told the Democrats about the invitation to OSCE, without mentioning the U.N. issue.

... continued on page...

The important point is the US (in particular Republicans) did not want the UN involved.

Here are the details of the OSCE "observation":

http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/field_activities/?election=2004us


The OSCE/ODIHR plans to deploy 75 short-term observers shortly before election day. The short-term observers will be deployed in teams of two across the United States to monitor the opening of polling stations, the voting, the counting of ballots and the tabulation of results at all levels. After election day, the Election Observation Mission will issue a statement of preliminary findings and conclusions. A comprehensive final report will be released about a month after the completion of the election process.

Like any government or NGO, "about a month" still hasn't happened yet. (I can say this, I'm a G-man myself.) ;)

But they have released a good preliminary document:

http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2004/11/3779_en.pdf

The document had some negative and positive points. Here is a negative point:


Allegations of electoral fraud and voter suppression, primarily among minorities, were widely reported and presented to the EOM in the pre-election period. The EOM is concerned that the widespread nature of these allegations may undermine confidence in the electoral process.

Being involved in elections in the US for years now, I'd actually characterize the report has as a pretty fair assesment. But any politically active American can immediately understand that much of the report has common sense in it, for example:

The EOM took notice of the fact that only a small proportion of the elections for the 434 Congressional districts were generally perceived to be competitive. This was attributed largely to the way in which Congressional district boundaries are drawn so as to favour the incumbent party.

And here is something that politicians don't want to hear:

This may account in part for the reported distrust of DREs,
especially touch screen machines, a distrust compounded by the decertification of certain DREs in California. In the absence of uniform certification standards, safeguards which do not entirely depend on electronic data, would enhance public confidence in the DREs. The most obvious solution would be the prompt introduction of a paper audit trail, which appears to have been successfully implemented in certain areas.

Notice that in addition to being polite and saying that people don't trust the electronic voting machines (DREs), they specifically mention the decertification in California!

They also talked about the provisional ballots, which a family friend in Texas whom also works the elections said they were a nightmare for Galveston County. I've been working with provisional ballots in Contra Costa and Yolo counties California for years so they are an old trick for us ... few problems here.

Anyways, while I feel that this report is valid I'd actually characterize it as timid too. When you have monitors, there IMHO should be an appendix with specific incident reports. Now this is just the preliminary document, and as such I'd say it is an example of a well written analysis, the scientist in me wants more. Any active NS roleplayer knows that we could cut and paste this document for any election and it would still be pretty valid, which is why we need actual examples of what happened.

Furthermore, the UN should have been involved. Part of the point isn't just to certify an election ... but rather to give foreigners a chance to learn from our system, good and bad.

Two years ago a Fullbright (sp?) scholar came from Spain to work with my department, and unfortunately I don't think he learned as much from us as I would have liked. Had I been given a month to prep him, I would have been taking him out to the field with me more often and actually having him run production water quality studies for me. But he came at a time when I was swamped with work, so he was left on his own. But the point behind the international exchange is so that engineers in different countries can network ...

When he went back to Spain, his government started sending him to EU meetings because of his experience of working with Americans. They figured he would be better equiped to speaking in English and more importantly understanding how engineers in different governments think.

Nobody really talks about this secondary benefit, but it is there none-the-less. So I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't involve the UN (though I can understand why not given the tension between the Bush administration and the UN). :(