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Will U.S. Elections Pass the 'Global Test'?
By Thomas P. Kilgannon
October 15, 2004

Next month, the United States will have the distinction of having joined the elite club of countries like Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka whose elections are scrutinized and critiqued by international election monitors. It is a national disgrace that is openly advocated by leftist activists and a group of congressional Democrats.

After UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned down a request from ten Democrat Congressmen to send poll watchers (he said the petition had to originate with the executive branch of government) the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) gleefully accepted a similar invitation channeled through the State Department. Soon afterward a Canadian newspaper headline gloated - accurately - "Third World Monitors U.S. Elections."

The OSCE has already dispatched a group of five "election experts" to the United States. There really wouldn't be a problem with the OSCE observing our election if they were here as observers; that is, to learn how democracy works and witness democratic elections in the country that does it better than any other.

But that is not the case. This group of international busy bodies is in the United States to cast judgment and provide support and cover to a hopelessly disgruntled group of partisan Democrats who, if George Bush is re-elected, will contest the election on any and all grounds. In debate on the House floor, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas said a coalition of "some 10,000 or more lawyers" is ready to challenge election results that favor Republicans.

In its preliminary report, the OSCE began laying the foundation from which liberal partisans can contest the November 2nd results. During their visit here, the agenda of OSCE monitors was overwhelmingly stacked with liberal organizations: Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP, People for the American Way, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, among others. The group met with eight representatives from Congress - all but one of them were Democrats.

The OSCE echoed Democrat complaints about the Help America Vote Act which established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). "The establishment of the EAC was noticeably delayed," the OSCE report stated. The report also complained that without a national election guru in Washington, Secretaries of State "were left without needed guidelines, and found it impossible to avail themselves of the funding for new voting technology."

The OSCE carped that voter identification is made more difficult because Americans are not required to carry a "national identification document." This group of outsiders predicted "greater controversy" in the 2004 election than there was in 2000 because voting machines do not "produce the necessary paper trail."

In its history, the OSCE has given its seal of approval to the re-election of national dictators who garner more than 90 percent of the vote. Given that, you might think it would commend the U.S. electoral structure as a system in which vibrant, competitive races take place which often produce close, and sometimes very close, results.

The group also charged that states which allow overseas voters to voluntarily waive their right to a secret vote by faxing a marked ballot are "not consistent with...the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and OSCE commitments." What the OSCE sees as a violation of a United Nations declaration is what we in America call freedom of choice. If the OSCE demanded we apply Kofi Annan's standards, thousands of U.S. military personnel living and fighting abroad could be deprived of their right to vote.

The OSCE report bemoans the fact that the U.S. has no "central election body" like the IRS which would efficiently administer the presidential election. Our Founders called that federalism and they purposely decentralized the voting process. We believe that citizens can better administer elections at the local level than can bureaucrats in Washington, much less Third World novices. Despite some glitches here and there, voters, poll workers, party monitors and the media apply checks and balances against one another to ensure the integrity of U.S. elections.

These European election police claim authority to sit in judgment of our elections because the State Department consented to the Copenhagen Document, an obscure diplomatic agreement, even though their own report states, "the absence of a central body administering elections in the U.S. creates a lack of clarity as to which authority...should provide accreditation to international observers."

No government authority should have invited international monitors to cast judgment on our elections. They are here only because Democrats, should they lose, will do all they can to embarrass their country. They have submitted our elections to a "global test" and rigged it so that we will fail. Their hatred for George W. Bush has taken them beyond the extreme.

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Thomas P. Kilgannon is the president of Freedom Alliance, a foundation dedicated to preserving American sovereignty.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.