Has anybody heard from the international election monitors?

[MsAnthropy]

I remember articles stating that the election was going to be monitored by people outside of the country but I haven't heard the results.

[hinachan]

1. That was a farce, too

I heard one of them talking while channel surfing (it was on one of the C-SPAN channels). So far as I could tell, they were acting as if all was right with the world, so I just changed channels....

[bostonbabs]

2. try Jimmy Carter for starters

[SteppingRazor]

3. Oh really?

Here's this:

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/11/C971ADD4-F24E-462A-9105-E78002386D33.html


This monitor from Russia says he saw no wrong doing, but admits that many other monitors were NOT ALLOWED INTO POLLING PLACES AT ALL.

This happened in many places in Florida, apparently. Looking into it myself.

[RememberTheCoup]

4. Republicans wouldn't let them observe.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041102/pl_afp/us_vote_observers_osce&cid=1521&ncid=2043

Foreign monitors barred from some US polling stations: OSCE observer

Tue Nov 2, 5:51 PM ET Politics - AFP

COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Some observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE (news - web sites)), a Europe-wide security and rights forum, were barred from entering some polling stations in the United States, one of them said.

"Although we were officially invited to follow the (US presidential) election, the message was not passed on to the polling stations," he told the Danish news agency Ritzau.

He said he had been personally refused admission at three out of four polling stations in Columbus, Ohio.

Another Danish OSCE observer, conservative Carina Christensen, reported less serious irregularities in Jacksonville, Florida, but said police had been called when she tried to visit a Republican office.

She and three other delegation members had been well received by local representatives of the Democrat(ic) Party who had ensured their access to polling stations.

But Republicans were less welcoming. "We were denied entry to a local Republican office in Orlando," she told Ritzau: "They called the police, saying they had received guidelines from Washington to do so."

The OSCE said in September it believed the weakness in US elections apparent in 2000 would not be fully corrected in time for Tuesday's vote.

[Mother Jones]

5. One of the observers said it will take at least 1 month

to pull together the data from their observations.

(that applies, of course, to those who were allowed to monitor)