Tuesday, October 23, 2012

UN Organization to Monitor U.S. Election

As you might imagine, right-wingers are throwing temper tantrums about a U.N. affiliated group monitoring U.S. elections.  It's about effing time! 

Poor babies. With all the right-wing voter suppression efforts going on, someone is afraid the U.N. group will spoil their fun.

The real problem?  The number of monitors is not large enough to monitor all the right-wing voter suppression efforts going on in this country:  

United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud. 

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers from its human rights office around the country on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, including potential disputes at polling places. It's part of a broader observation mission that will send out an additional 80 to 90 members of parliament from nearly 30 countries...  

[A]ll OSCE member counties, which include the United States, have committed since 1990 to hold free and democratic elections and to allow one another to observe their elections. The observers, from countries such as Germany, France, Serbia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, will observe voting at polling places and other political activity.