UN appears set to dispatch poll watchers to detect ‘voter suppression’ by conservatives
United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week.
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That is how The Hill report begins and then details how liberal groups have turned to the UN to monitor US Elections and allegations of voter suppression.
Civil rights organizations have met with OSCE representatives to discuss concerns regarding their perception that there are systematic plans to suppress minority voters who are likely to vote for Barack Obama.
The NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, and others have sent a letter to Daan Everts of OSCE to warn of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans- particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.” Observers from Germany, France, Serbia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other nations are planning to monitor U.S. polling places and “other” political activity.
Catherine Engelbrecht, founder and president of True the Vote, sharply rebuked the request for foreign surveillance of the U.S. election. “These activist groups sought assistance not from American sources, but from the United Nations,” she asserted. “The United Nations has no jurisdiction over American elections.”
Giovanna Maiola, a spokeswoman for OSCE, said that the monitors will “observe the overall election process, not just the ballot casting. They are focusing on a number of areas on the state level, including the legal system, election administration, the campaign, the campaign financing [and] new voting technologies used in the different states.”
Maiola added that OSCE has been regularly invited to observe elections in the U.S. in the past, and has done so since 2002.
Some states, including Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Mexico, permit international observation during elections. Maiola said that OSCE will only observe in polls in states in which international access is permitted. However, she indicated that OSCE does intend to follow up on the warnings raised by the civil rights organizations.
“We attended their meeting, we took note of the issues they raised and we asked our observers in the field to follow up on them,” Maiola said.
True the Vote plans to deploy thousands of volunteers to polling stations to monitor election fraud. Engelbrecht said that she is excited about the number of volunteers and the level of enthusiasm for election integrity this year.
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