- The joke, during the endless presidential election recounts
in Florida two years ago, was that Russia and Albania would send poll monitors
to help the United States with its unexpected bump on the road to democracy.
Now, the joke has become reality.
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- A high-level delegation of European and North American
election observers - including members from Russia and Albania - arrived
yesterday for a week-long mission to watch Florida's mid-term elections,
which take place on Tuesday.
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- Their task: to see if the world's most powerful democracy
has learned anything from the disastrous 36-day showdown between George
Bush and Al Gore in 2000, in which the world saw every wart in Florida's
deeply flawed electoral system without ever discovering for sure who had
won.
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- Certainly, the Russians and Albanians know a thing or
two about flawed, rigged or fraudulent elections. After receiving a decade
of lectures from Western democracies about overhauling their own systems,
they also have a good idea how to overcome them. It remains to be seen
whether Florida isn't too tough a nut to crack, even for them. "Whatever
else it is, it will be an experience," said a tight-lipped Ilirjan
Celibashi, head of Albania's Central Electoral Committee.
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- Mandated by the OSCE, the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe, the 10-man delegation will not be manning polling
stations. However, that might not have been a bad idea, given the experience
of the presidential election and the more recent Democratic primary, when
voting machines again malfunctioned and hundreds of people complained of
being disenfranchised.
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- Rather, the team will look at the broader picture of
Florida's electoral laws, how they are applied, and the ways in which US
practices fall short of the stringent requirements imposed on emerging
democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
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- This is the first time international monitors have gone
to the United States. The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights has been campaigning for some time to improve electoral standards
in some of the older, established democracies.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=347515
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