Maybe the Russians can keep things in Florida under control.....JEB can't
Published on Thursday, October 31, 2002 by the lndependent/UK
Albanian and Russian Observers Sent to
Monitor American Elections
by Andrew Gumbel
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mandated by the OSCE, the Organization 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.
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.
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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