Cold War Relic to Dispatch Observers For American Presidential Election

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The New York Sun

UNITED NATIONS – A Cold War relic known as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has sent representatives to observe America’s presidential election and recommend ways to make it better.


The OSCE election observer mission, consisting of some 60 monitors from 25 countries will present its members to the Washington press corps today. Its members, mostly parliamentarians from Western Europe and the former Communist bloc will be dispatched to contested states, like Ohio and Florida, to observe the November 2 process.


“It’s the first time we observe an American presidential election,” an OSCE spokeswoman, Urdur Gunnarsdottir, told The New York Sun yesterday. In addition to the hotly contested states, she added, observers will be sent to “states and localities that have not been in the news for election-related issues.”


In 2002, OSCE observers went to Florida, and their report consisted of some advice for future elections. Recommendations included “access for non-partisan domestic observers to all levels of the election administration, reform in the use of the felons list, and the development of more effective links between the state and county levels of election administration.”


The report also stated that the new touch-screen machines replacing the old paper punch-card voting equipment do not allow for the possibility of a manual recount in the event of a very close Election Day outcome.


A group of Democratic members of Congress have demanded earlier this year that America let the United Nations send observers to help avoid a repeat of the 2000 Florida outcome. “We know that much more needs to be done to ensure these elections are truly fair and transparent,” Rep. Barbara Lee of California told UPI recently. “Democracy is at a crossroads in this country. We simply can’t afford another repeat of 2000.”


The U.N., which tries to avoid the appearance of interference in American politics, was not eager. “We only send observers if an executive branch of a government requests it,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told the Sun, adding that no such invitation came from the Bush administration.


The State Department, however, did issue an invitation to the OSCE, which routinely sends similar teams to elections that take place in its 55 members from Europe, Central Asia, and North America, including America. “Election observation is not about interfering,” Ms. Gunnarsdottir said. The object, she added is to “monitor and report.” The team is expected to issue its recommendations shortly after the election.


Critics have expressed reservations about the fact that foreigners were invited by the State Department to observe an American election. But others, including in conservative circles, took it in stride.


“More than 200 years of election speak for themselves,” a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute for foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka, told the Sun. “It could be a great opportunity for them to see how fair elections take place.” She added that just as America sends election observers around the world, there is no problem in accepting observers from other countries here. “I can’t get exercised about this,” she said.


Critics, however, pointed out that some members of the European team come from dubious background, when it comes to fair democratic standards.


Russian legislator Leonid Ivanchenko was identified by the Washington Times as “a former member of the Russian Communist Party, who was expelled from the Russian Duma in September, along with two colleagues, for founding a rival communist political party.” The French Communist Party member Jean-Claude Lefort traveled to Cuba and fought to win legal recognition for French veterans of the Spanish Civil War.


The OSCE mission consists of a team of 10 technical observers, headed by Rita Sussmuth of Germany, and a parliamentarian mission, headed by Swiss Parliament member Barbara Haering.


Ms. Haering recently indicated in an interview with the Web site Swiss info that the organization, founded in the Cold War to assure standards of democracy and transparency in government, might gain credibility from the American mission, because “countries east of Vienna often complain that the OSCE has double standards and that we should be checking what goes on in Western nations, too.”


Nevertheless, she added, America might gain, too. “Our presence should give American voters more confidence in their electoral system,” she said.


The New York Sun

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