OK, here's my issue with the OSCE (ok, issue*s*)

I'm having trouble writing this post because I have SO many arguments against this very bad, bad idea that I don't know where to begin. Here's a quick synopsis of what I'm trying to say, and then I'll flesh it out.

This organization is useless for its purported purposes, and is subject to corruption the likes of which the United States, with its ever-depressing pool of politicians on the scene, has never seen face to face.

This organization had elected to the Presidency of it's elections unit an individual who has a very specific agenda, and questionable ethics. He is one of very few US Federal judges to have ever been impeached and removed from office. (He was caught taking bribes to let racketeering criminals walk.) Yet he's the head of their commission to ensure "fair and democratic" elections. Oookkkkaayyy...

Our Constitution delineates the process by which our elections are run, and the states, the ones mentioned in the United States, are the ones responsible for the election of National offices. This is a states issue, and the power and authority to handle the debacle of the 2000 elections needs to be on the states themselves. (AND many states, particularly those in question after 2000, have taken steps to truly ensure fair AND democratic elections!) This simply isn't the place for foreign interests who are not beholden to, nor desiring to conform to OUR Constitution. But it's OUR Constitution, and these are OUR elections.

You can get a vague, undetailed primer on the organization at the organization's website here. This is a monitoring organization, of which we (the U.S.) are a part, although I'm betting most of the Citizens of the US aren't aware this organization even exists, let alone that we are a part of it, funding it ~we're paying a little over 9% of its operating budget~, and are now considered "obligated" to permit foreign interests into our country to "monitor" our elections.

You can get more information at CNN (which is tickled pink by this), the EUobserver (again, thinks its neat), and from the American Policy.org website (which states some of my biggest concerns with this issue, although not as unbiased as I would like to see- this isn't a partisan issue, this is a national sovereignty issue, but that's just my .02).

My concerns with having a European Security group overseeing our elections are many, starting with the fact that it is the states themselves, not the State Department that runs our Federal elections. Power, in America, is supposed to flow UP- FROM the people TO the States THEN on to the President. We've got it all wrong to think that the power needs to be meted out in doses that we common folk can kin.

Jeff, thank you for your comments -is this Steph's Jeff? Hi!- but I will have to disagree that it's all ok based on the ideas they're just watching and they've been here before. If anything, the fact that they've been brought in before makes me feel worse, although that was at least on a state level and the state (CA) had a say (though probably not via a referendum, I'm guessing!). The idea that they're "just watching", however, while exactly what the PR face is all about, is mostly not true. Please allow me to elaborate:

They come prepared with their own Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. We, as "member states", are bound by that membership and the organization's own by-laws state that this agreement is "based on a legally-binding statute in the form of a treaty". Their CCA is to be considered an OSCE-related entity, outside the PR realm of the OSCE itself, yet fully compliant with the OSCE. So the actual OSCE does the watching, but by our mere involvement with this organization and its monitoring, we bring ourselves under the jurisdiction of the OSCA-related CCA. Our power as States has been yanked completely out of our hands and placed in an international forum whose decisions are binding. Our Presidential elections could potentially be hung in the balance of Alcee Hastings' crew and a committee in Geneva. Furthermore, we would be "legally bound" by their decision, regardless of the "will of the people".

There are other reasons we simply do not need to have monitoring in our elections: the states, as is appropriate, made changes after the 2000 election to ensure that another situation such as that did not happen again. That's their job. They did it. But that's not good enough? Why? Let's take a look at who will be "just watching" and see if it makes any of us feel any more certain that this group can somehow "ensure" a "fair and democratic" election for us (with thanks to Ron Paul-R, Tx):

*In Bosnia, the State Department observed intimidation of prospective voters and incomplete voter registers. 107% of the possible voting-age population turned out for that election, and the OSCE gave its nod.

*In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rakhmonov and cohorts continue gaining power in elections the State Department dubbed as "neither free nor fair." In Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov, a former Communist Party leader, has held office since 1990 and in 1999 was appointed president for life.

*In 1998, the OSCE observer team that was to monitor the cease-fire between the Serbs and Albanians was caught sending targeting information back to the US and European Union in advance of the U.S.-led attack on Serbia.

*This year, the OSCE approved the election of Mikheil Saakashvili in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with a Saddam Hussein-like 97 percent of the vote!


Since the Florida aberrations in 2000, a nationwide election came — and went — in which a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives was chosen in undisputedly free and fair elections.

In October 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft unveiled the Voting Access and Integrity Initiative, pledging the Justice Department would prosecute any election fraud more vigorously than ever.

Voting machines have been replaced, ballots re-written. I cannot think of a single country that has bent over backwards the way the US has to remedy a situation as quickly, nor as clearly.

This is also about a step in general that we have no business making in many ways. It's about more than just watching. This is about finally getting the US to kneel before the UN and start "learning its place" in the International Community. If y'all honestly think it's about "fair and democratic elections," then... I don't know what to say.

There are probably more typos in this entry than I'd care to admit. It's ok, I'm going to call it good. There is so much more to say, but I could fill an entire Civics class with the history and information needed to get it all out there and at some point I think Blogger would seize up on me and refuse to allow more entries. So, I am going to go read a bit of the Lord of the Rings, enjoy a hot cup of coffee, then go kiss my babies and get some rest.

Be good to your little ones.
~Dy