Europeans To Monitor American Voters

shonagon53 writes "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."

Comments

Re:mistakes

[jbarr]

We know our election system is broken. It failed us 4 years ago.

Please stop disseminating FUD. The US Presidential election system is not broken and it did not fail us 4 years ago. The problem was a technological one that produced questionable ballots. If you are disappointed by the results, it's either because "your" candidate didn't win or you don't understand the significance of the Electoral College. The fact that a US president can get elected by a minority of the popular vote is NOT the result of a broken system, but the result of the Electoral College system. If we change to a straight popular vote system, then cities and states with small populations will lose their voice to large population areas which will become the sole target of future campaigning. While there certainly may be a better way to conduct an election, (for example, modifying the way Electors are chosen and assigned) it's still the "fairest" method available to maintain consistent representation.

Additionally, to put the "deciding votes" into perspective, Florida's Electors were only the "deciding votes" because of the timing of how the returns were reported and the timing of the "questionable" ballot issues. If, for example, another state had been "held up" by some balloting issue, then Florida, despite its issues, may not have been the "actual" deciding vote. It was a matter of timing. To "blame" Florida is unfounded because it's the "total" of the votes that counts, not how an individual state votes. I know that may sound contradictory, but it's also the most objective, non-partisan way to view it...