Russia to monitor American elections
The Guardian
Oliver Burkeman in New York
Thursday October 31, 2002

Amid the worldwide outbreak of Schadenfreude that accompanied America's
chaotic presidential showdown in 2000, senior members of the Russian
Communist party sarcastically offered to send election monitors to Palm
Beach to help the nascent democracy find its feet. Albanian politicians
echoed the joke, as did President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

But the line between jokes and reality in Florida has always been a
blurred
one: now, America has accepted the offer.

Yesterday, the first international delegation of poll monitors assigned
to
observe an American election arrived in the US, operating under the
aegis of
the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. And
representatives
from Russia and Albania were among them.

The monitors are charged with assessing whether next Tuesday's mid-term
elections in Florida meet international standards of democracy "with a
focus
on evaluation of the actions the authorities have undertaken to remedy
the
problems that were observed during the 2000 elections", OSCE spokesman
Jens-Hagen Eschenbacher said in an interview with Radio Free Europe.

Two years ago voting machines malfunctioned and ballot papers left
thousands
of voters complaining that they had voted against their true intentions.

There were also reports of problems with the Democratic primary election
for
the governorship of Florida which was held last September.

"It is not the first time that a western democracy has been monitored,"
Mr
Eschenbacher said. "We also assessed the ... presidential elections in
France, and we are about to send an assessment team to Turkey as well."

But it is a first for the US, and an event likely to be received with
some
glee in countries lectured by Washington on their electoral processes.