What happened to the International Monitors??

I apologize if this has already been addressed to death. It seems we might keep asking these people what they observed.

From The Nation's pre-election "Groundwar" blogs--(The Nation was all over election fraud until Election Day, then they seem to have gone into denial and cognitive dissonance. The magazine is quickly losing relevance by avoiding the most crucial issue before us.)

This is from a report on International Monitors
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/groundwar?pid=1969

snip-
On November 2, one hundred specialists from the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and twenty experts invited by the San Francisco-based non-profit Global Exchange will observe and monitor elections in crucial swing states across the country.

The idea of international monitors made headlines last July when thirteen Congressional Democrats, concerned about a repeat of the fiasco in Florida, sent a letter to Kofi Annan asking the UN to send representatives. "We believe that the engagement of international election monitors can be a catalyst to expedite the necessary reform, as well as reduce the likelihood of questionable practices and voter disenfranchisement on Election Day," the letter stated. House Republicans shot back with concerns about the infringement of US sovereignty and passed an amendment to a foreign aid bill banning US tax dollars from supporting any UN mission to monitor votes. In a compromise, the State Department decided to invite the less-controversial multinational OSCE to see if US elections measure up to international standards.

(The letter:
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/tx30_johnson/HouseMembersUnitedNationsElectionMonitor.html)

snip-
The Global Exchange mission hit a roadblock just recently when election supervisors in Ohio's Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Franklin (Columbus) County and Florida's Miami-Dade and Broward (Ft. Lauderdale) County--crucial districts marked by irregularities in 2000 and growing concerns in 2004--said that they will prevent international monitors from observing polling sites there. Most states, including Ohio and Florida, have laws prohibiting independent, non- partisan observers. The State Department-invited OSCE, however, hasn't experienced similar barriers at their sites.

Whatever the outcome, the presence of international vote monitors in the US on a larger scale than ever before will hopefully draw needed attention to the defects in the mechanics of American democracy. Come tomorrow, it may not be a pretty picture. As Horacio Boneo says, "There's some spots on the shining city on the hill."


OSCE/ODHIR 2004 Election Mission to the US site:
http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/field_activities/?election=2004us

What was the first report? It is not on their website.
"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."

Urdur Gunnarsdottir
Spokesperson, Press and Public Information Adviser
E-mail: Urdur.Gunnarsdottir@osce.org

Here is their 2002 US Election Report (to see if they meant business then--which is hard to believe--given they were "invited by the US government):
http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2003/01/1465_en.pdf

This is the site of the San Francisco group. Their website has also not been updated since the election, which seems odd...
http://www.fairelection.us/

I e-mailed both site's contacts.
Global Exchange has a petition on their site--nothing new on the FairVote site--acknowledging the rampant disenfrancisement, etc., but conceding that had the race not been won by such a wide margin, these would be a problem....

Maybe this has all been gone over here and none of these observers have any teeth? Any integrity? Hard to believe there aren't some who would be willing to say it out loud that this was not an okay election, not in any sense....

right places. The real action was taking place behind the scenes and well concealed. The GOP has learned a lot since those amateurish days of Watergate.

and, they might know how weird it is not to make exit polls available.
So, did they just say, we couldn't observe, so we don't know?

I remembered seeing it in LBN-

Global monitors find faults
By Thomas Crampton International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
.........
The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system.

"To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler," said Konrad Olszewski, an election observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
.........
Variations in local election law not only make it difficult for election monitors to generalize on a national basis, but also prohibit the observers from entering polling stations at all in some states and counties. Such laws mean that no election observers from the organization are in Ohio, a swing state fraught with battles over voter intimidation and other polling issues.

As for electronic voting, Gould said he preferred Venezuela's system to the calculator-sized touchpads in Miami.
.........
Their visit to Miami included failed attempts to witness election preparations at two polling stations on Monday evening. After a two-hour drive through heavy traffic, the observers found both polling stations deserted.

"In Venezuela we drove around to all the polling stations ahead of time to make sure this didn't happen," Gould said. "Here we consider studying the system more important than looking at actual voting."

Indeed, the team left the Miami polling station little more than half an hour after voting began to make a live interview scheduled on CNN. Media relations has become a major part of their mission, with reporters mobbing the monitors at every stop in Florida and a Japanese television crew from NTV tailing them across the state since Friday.

http://iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/02/news/observe.html

and for pure American hospitality, you just can't beat...
Not everyone agrees. Jeff Miller, a Republican congressman from Florida, considers the monitors an insult and has publicly urged them to leave. "Get on the next plane out of the United States to go monitor an election somewhere else, like Afghanistan," he said

I have to run out, but I will look into this more later tonight.

"To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler,"

HOLY SHIT. We won the cold war right?

I forgot it because it just stated the obvious and did not seem to address the real issue--was this a fair, acceptable election?
Perhaps we will hear more from them once their reports are complete. It seems they should want all information, including ours, especially since they were not able to observe. A damning word from them might go someplace w/ MSM.

I certainly think it might be worth continuing to hound them--especially about them coming up with a statement about the exit polls.
Would they say, from their experience in international elections, that in a case like this the data should be released?

But I'm inclined to believe they were simply Repub State Dept approved window dressing. They even cut out from the work for a media appearance.

Indeed, the team left the Miami polling station little more than half an hour after voting began to make a live interview scheduled on CNN. Media relations has become a major part of their mission, with reporters mobbing the monitors at every stop in Florida and a Japanese television crew from NTV tailing them across the state since Friday.

The way their initial impression reads (which I never even saw in any US media), they weren't willing to say what the admin wanted. You'd think if they were on the up and up, we'd have heard more by now.

When I was election inspector, I'd have had to ask them (nicely, of course) to leave.

We were told that we were legally bound to ask any visiting media to leave, too, but to ignore them, unless we wanted to be the ones roasted on the evening news. ;)

"MIAMI The global implications of the U.S. election are undeniable, but international monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best global practices"
<snip>

"To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler," said Konrad Olszewski"
MORE
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/02/news/observe.html

A professor from the University of Illinois in Chicago also listed several grievances with international monitors after volunteering at a heavily Hispanic precinct on Cleveland's West Side, she said.

"These were Puerto Ricans and they didn't have Spanish ballots," said Irma Olmedo, who spent Election Day translating and providing other help at precincts L, N and O in Cleveland's Ward 13.

<snip>

http://www.cleveland.com/election/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/isvot/110026270088230.xml

after the election and their report wasn't done yet, but it was obvious to me that when she was asked direct questions regarding our election process and "democracy" she would avoid and side-step the question. I had an article about their report, which may have been on "Buzz flash" that that stated the securities commission found US elections lacked democracy.

n/t:think:

Is there a pattern here? :freak:

MUST WRITE International Inspectors before their final reports come out!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=201&topic_id=6052#6122

:kick:

I have my fingers crossed that something good (like honest) comes out of our efforts!

Last I checked their final report had not come out (I could be wrong I checked sometime ago) and it said they were still investigating some additional issues. One point to make if you email them is that the US election is important to Europe since many of the same machines are being sold there.

Where's JIMMY CARTER??? Wasn't he supposed to be monitoring it, like heading it?

to have an honest vote in FL?

groups. I thought it was his Institute that led them. My mother has been asking me where he is (she campaigned for him all over the US when she was my age- huge supporter of him) I keep checking the news via google, and his website but I don't see anything. I remember reading a report from a Russian election observer saying that we have really messed up elections here in the US. It was in a Russian paper right after the election. I'll try and find it.

Or are the Danish just the reporters with the biggest b*lls?
:P

what they had to say, so it was a little hard to tell how strongly they were going to come out. Seemed fairly mild. I wonder if they video is available on C-SPAN?