International poll watchers face U.S. red tape

By John-thor Dalhburg
Los Angeles Times

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For the first time, machinery created at U.S. government prompting to foster the spread of democratic elections throughout the former Soviet bloc is being used to assess how freely and fairly the United States chooses its chief executive.

At least 75 election monitors from OSCE, an intergovernmental organization founded to help bridge the East-West divide during the Cold War, plan to be on the ground tomorrow in precincts from coast-to-coast to observe and deliver an independent evaluation of how the nation votes.

Under its commitments as an OSCE member, the United States is required to invite the outside scrutiny of its electoral process.

What the observers will be able to see firsthand, though, is unclear.

Konrad Olszewski flew to Florida as part of the international team, but the elections adviser from Poland said Saturday he might not be able to get close to the ballot box.

Olszewski and another foreign observer from Canada were received courteously by Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood but told that under the Florida law, poll-watchers must be registered voters in the county where they desire to observe the voting and must submit written applications in advance, said Alia Faraj, Hood's spokeswoman.

Olszewski said he went to his meeting with Hood in Tallahassee bearing documents from the U.S. State Department attesting his status, but that made no difference as far as Florida law and officials were concerned.

Andrew Bruce, 34, a Briton who has been observing elections for the OSCE for four years, said he was planning to be in Ohio tomorrow but didn't know whether he'd be allowed to watch people vote.

Since 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, a Warsaw, Poland-based branch of the OSCE, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, has been responsible for observing elections in the 55 member countries.

Around 2000, however, the office began sending observers to watch and rate elections in established Western democracies, including France, Britain, Spain and the United States.
 
The idea of outside observers at a U.S. election doesn't sit well with all U.S. politicians. "It strikes me as somewhat presumptuous that someone from a foreign land who is unfamiliar with our institutions and traditions would come in here and act as judge and jury on our elections," said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.

The current OSCE mission's self-assigned task is not to tell Americans how to conduct their elections but to gauge how the Help America Vote Act is applied in practice, Bruce said.

That U.S. law, signed by President Bush in 2002, sets minimum standards for the states to follow in key areas of running elections and provides federal funds to help pay for the upgrading and modernization of voting machines.

The international monitors also plan to scrutinize how new electronic-voting equipment performs, whether there are problems with early voting and provisional ballots, and if significant numbers of people are denied their right to vote.