Monday, August 09, 2004
Monitoring US Elections
In a suprising move, suprising to me anyway, our State Department has asked an International group to monitor the US elections this year. We are probably the oldest democracy currently on the face of the earth, and we're a country of laws. In fact, each state has hundreds of laws on the books about holding elections, and fiddling with those laws (as happened in Florida in 2000) just throws the whole process out of whack. Question: if this group, "The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe" (OSCE), decides that there's a problem in Florida, or Iowa, or Wisconsin and yet our laws find no problem... what happens? Can a candidate challenge an election based on evidence from some international body of observers?
Most countries probably looked up to our method of democracy before Gore took it to court in 2000. The resulting mess took us down countless notches in the eyes of the world. Now, if this group goes about the country and documents how poorly our voter rolls are kept, how doddering our poll workers are, how small our voter turnout is... what good can come of it?
Most countries probably looked up to our method of democracy before Gore took it to court in 2000. The resulting mess took us down countless notches in the eyes of the world. Now, if this group goes about the country and documents how poorly our voter rolls are kept, how doddering our poll workers are, how small our voter turnout is... what good can come of it?
