[Peace-discuss] International standards

[C. G. Estabrook]

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

	Global monitors find faults
	By Thomas Crampton
	International Herald Tribune
	Wednesday, November 3, 2004

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.

Olszewski, whose democratic experience began with Poland's first free
election in 1989, was one of 92 observers brought in by the Vienna-based
organization, which was founded to maintain military security in Europe at
the height of the cold war.

Two-member observer teams fanned out across 11 states and included
citizens of 36 countries, ranging from Canada and Switzerland to Latvia,
Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia and Belarus.

Formation of the U.S. election mission came after the 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."

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."

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.

"Each electronic vote in Venezuela also produces a ticket that voters then
drop into a ballot box," Gould said. "Unlike fully electronic systems,
this gives a backup that can be used to counter claims of massive fraud."

Venezuela had trouble implementing the system, Gould added, because the
ticket printers kept breaking down.

The United States is also nearly unique in lacking a unified voter
registration system or national identity card, Gould said, adding that he
would ideally require U.S. voters to dip a finger in an ink bowl or have a
cuticle stained black after voting.

"In El Salvador, Namibia and so many other elections, the ink was
extremely important in preventing challenges to multiple voting," Gould
said. "In Afghanistan it didn't work so well, because they used the
dipping ink for the cuticles, so it wiped right off."

To observe elections in Florida, Gould and his partner first stopped to
meet state election officials in Tallahassee.

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.

"There is a lot of interest in Japan where this election observation is
seen as a kind of satire," said Fumi Kobayashi, the New York-based
correspondent for NTV. "So strange to imagine Europeans coming to monitor
elections in the U.S., don't you think?"

A selection of voters and election officials who were questioned as they
left the Miami polling station said they mainly found the monitors
reassuring.

"The United States has long been a model for the world," said Richard
Williams, a poll watcher officially designated by the Democratic party.
"If we allow international observers, we will continue to have a leading
role."

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.

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