The Bush Administration throws a certain group of Democrats a bone. Unfortunately, the bone still has a lot of meat on it.
The Bush administration has invited a team of international monitors to observe the U.S. presidential election in November, but the group will not come from the United Nations, as some congressional Democrats had urged.[SNIP]
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the largest regional organization in the world with 55 participating nations, will monitor the U.S. election on Nov. 2. Members include Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain and the United States.It’s not unprecedented, but it gives me an uneasy feeling, to say the least.
OSCE officials deployed an observer team to monitor the most recent U.S. elections, on Nov. 5, 2002.
She [Urdur Gunnarsdottir, spokeswoman for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights] said the OSCE does not have authority over the election results in any way. "We don't give them a yes or a no or grade them," she said. "But we monitor, we publicize what we see. You can call it political pressure." (ed.--bold mine.)Yes, you can.
The Democrats who had pushed for U.N. involvement applauded the move, saying it may help avoid what they say was disenfranchisement of voters during the 2000 election in Florida and other states.The only bright spot that may come from this: if President Bush is re-elected, few Liberals/Leftists—outside of the hardcore conspiracy theorists—will be likely to dispute the result. That’s probably what the president’s advisers have calculated as well.
Keep watch.
