Europeans To Monitor American Voters

[WarmToast]

I found this via http://www.slashdot.org
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The United States is known as being the world's most stable democracy. But since the Florida 2000 fiasco, things have changed. Europe's famous Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will now be monitoring the U.S. elections. The institution normally monitors elections in third world countries in transition, and in crisis areas or regions where civil wars have destabilized the political process. In november, the OSCE will be monitoring local and state elections in Kazakhstan, Skopje, Eastern Congo, Ouagadougou and... the United States. As the BBC reports, for some Americans this comes as a humiliation; others see it as a necessity, since they have lost trust in the American election process.
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I think it would be wise if every democracy invited 3rd-party observers in to monitor their election process. If there is nothing to hide then there is everything to gain by proving that any given democracy is a true democracy.

However I can see only see this going 1 of 2 ways:
1. Observers see no problems, report they see no problems, and we get to stop hearing made-up nonsense about widespread election problems.

2. Observers claim they see problems. They might be telling the truth. They might be lying. Everyone gets upset. We never find out conclusively one way or the other.

[kj]

i dont think this is much of a surprise to be honest. the election system the states is a bit of a mystery to most of the planet. Bush sued to prevent a recount in Florida. I mean wtf. He sued the federal government to prevent vote recount in Florida... could something like that even happen here?

[AlanG]

with postal voting theres no need, all the fraud can be covered up very easily. Never mind that students can register to vote at their home and term time address adn no check is made to see if both have been used. We could actually have a vote over 100% of the voting pool.