The Nation: Failing the Electoral Standards

[Wilms]

April 25, 2005 (web only)

Failing the Electoral Standards

Andrew Gumbel

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has been monitoring elections in emerging democracies ever since the fall of the Berlin wall, but now it has done something different and uniquely controversial. It has turned its attention to the United States, issuing a report that highlights numerous areas in which this past November's presidential and Congressional elections failed to meet international standards.

One would have thought the voter reform movement in this country would jump at the chance to see the United States judged by the same criteria as Ukraine, Georgia or Kyrgyzstan--especially since the report finds it badly wanting. Here, in black and white, is authoritative proof that the disenfranchisement of ex-felons, the uneven rules applied to provisional balloting, the unreliability of voter registration procedures and the dual role of election supervisors who also help run partisan political campaigns are not merely objectionable but also violate international norms to which the United States, as a participating member of the fifty-five-nation OSCE, is a leading signatory.

And yet the OSCE's twenty-nine-page report, published in April has not generated a single column inch in any US newspaper. There are both good and bad reasons for this. For a start, the report has come out five months after the election, virtually guaranteeing its lack of topicality. It is also written in excruciatingly careful prose, belying the pointedness of its conclusions. There is no summary sentence stating explicitly that the United States has failed to meet its international commitments. (That has to be inferred.) Nor does it allude to the fact that Ohio was just a few tens of thousands of votes away from another Florida-style meltdown. This is a document that takes every conceivable step to avoid being controversial, even as it delivers its damning assessment.

-snip/more-

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=gumbel

Full Report (pdf):

http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2005/03/13658_en.pdf

[ztn]

1. I'm not at all surprised.

the unfettered truth about taboo topics like this one get real press all over the world. There is such a disconnect between the american consciousness and that of the rest of the modern (and third at times!) world.

Oh Well. At least we know...

[Carolab]

2. Jesus. They were roadblocked every step of the way.

And Russia KNOWS it, too, and so they are pissed at the OSCE.

"And so the debate rages on. The moral of the story is that meaningful electoral reform is not only a burning issue here in the United States. The democratic future of much of the world could depend on it."