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Home Front: Politix
Wake up and Rant: Global monitors find faults
2004-11-03
EFL, really!
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. 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. "They have one national election law and use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system," Olszewski said.
We should change our system to make it simpler for Europeans? Riiight.
Formation of the U.S. election mission came after the Enemies of America State Department issued a standard letter on June 9 inviting the group to monitor the election. All 55 states in the organization have, since 1990, agreed to invite observation teams to their national elections. The decision to observe a U.S. presidential election for the first time was made because of changes prompted by controversy over the U.S. elections in 2000, involving George W. Bush and Al Gore. "Our presence is not meant as a criticism," said Ron Gould, Olszewski's team partner and the former assistant chief electoral officer for Elections Canada. "We mainly want to assess changes taken since the 2000 election."
It's none of your f'n busines.
Speaking as voting began at 7 a.m. in the Firefighter's Memorial Hall for precincts 401 and 446 of Miami-Dade County, the observers drew sharp distinctions between U.S.-style elections and those conducted elsewhere around the world. "Unlike almost every other country in the world, there is not one national election today," said Gould, who has been involved in 90 election missions in 70 countries. "The decentralized system means that rules vary widely county by county, so there are actually more than 13,000 elections today."
We call thad fed-er-al-ism. Get used to it.
Posted by:Mrs. Davis

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Posted by: Desert Blondie   2004-11-03 1:51:29 PM  

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Posted by: tu3031   2004-11-03 1:21:30 PM  

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Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2004-11-03 1:11:50 PM  

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Posted by: trailing wife   2004-11-03 11:26:44 AM  

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Posted by: mojo   2004-11-03 10:31:49 AM  

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