This should bring us closer to that happy day when Americans understand who they really are. More on our sneaky, lyin', cheatin' natures later*. But for now, the media appears to be going bananas over the mere idea that we need election oversight in this country.
Conservative blogs and news media are all buzzing about a team of international election monitors coming to observe the presidential elections in November. The observers are arriving at the invitation of the State Department and the behest of a number of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, ACLU, and others.The latter groups’ call for an international team to keep an eye on the U.S. elections focuses particularly on states that have enacted strict voter I.D. laws and other curtailing of voting rights. An NAACP delegation visited the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland in September to bring attention to the issue. The NAACP’s move, and the idea of foreign presence in the U.S. to observe elections, has infuriated many on the right.
The response at the state-level is varying. Alabama Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard is, in protest of the monitors’ presence preparing legislation to have all poll watchers in Alabama hold U.S. citizenship. ... Think Progress
Hey Mr. Hubbard over there in 'bama! The time has come when not that many people want to claim US citizenship, and the rest could be lying!
On the adult side of this issue is the OSCE, an organization (not part of the UN) that America spearheaded as an international organization dedicated to protecting democracy -- the organization that will be sending monitors.
Counter to many of the exclamatory statements by the right-wing, the OSCE is not a part of the United Nations, but instead is loosely affiliated with the global organization. According to the 1990 Copenhagen Document, which the U.S. has signed, all member states of the OSCE are called upon to accept monitors to observe their elections. As a founding member, the U.S. has taken part in dozens of observer missions over the years. In allowing observers into the country, the United States is preventing setting a precedent for other, less democratic states, to ban these monitors. ...Think Progress
Unlike the conservative True the Vote "monitors," the international monitors will not interfere with the vote. Just watch and report and maybe give America a view of how false "True" can be in our fair land.
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*Later? Yes, I'm waiting for a transcript because I haven't got time to transcribe a revealing report on truth in America... because I'm trekking to town to early-vote this morning...
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Here's what the weather patterns are projected to look like on the US mainland first week in November.
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