Posted on 4-11-2002

Albanian & Russian Observers Monitor American Elections
By Andrew Gumbel, news.independent.co.uk, 31 October 2002

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 Organisation 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.