Here’s
the line in the sand. Americans can either sit down and do
nothing about a planned invasion of foreign election observers
or stand for their liberty by saying no. There is no middle
ground.
The Bush Administration, through Secretary of State Colin
Powell, has given into pressure from thirteen far-left Democrat
members of the House of Representatives and invited an international
group to officially observe the November presidential election.
Earlier this year, the thirteen Congressmen, led by Rep. Eddie
Bernice Johnson (D-TX), wrote a letter to United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan to request UN observers for the 2004 presidential
election. Johnson and her cohorts used the 2000 election troubles
in Florida to declare that the United States couldn’t be trusted
to conduct a fair election. “As legislators, we should guarantee
the American people that our country will not experience another
nightmare like the 2000 presidential election,” Johnson wrote
to Annan. The UN leader turned down the request, saying the
U.S. government must first invite the UN.
Few, at the time, took the effort seriously. It was obvious
that Johnson was playing politics, trying to embarrass President
Bush by stirring up tired old rhetoric about a stolen election
in 2000. The truth is, after the dust had settled in 2000
and the courts had decided the outcome, at least two separate
news organizations counted the ballots yet again and, in each
case, Bush’s lead increased. There was no fraud or questionable
result. America’s election system worked properly and the
outcome was legitimate.
There was no reason for any American government official,
especially from the Bush Administration, to take action on
the demands of a few discredited, far-left Democrat congressmen.
In fact, outraged Republican congressmen managed to pass an
amendment to a foreign aid bill barring federal officials
from using money to ask the UN to observe the election.
But, bolstered by a few good headlines, Johnson and crew refused
to quit. They wrote a letter to Secretary of State Colin
Powell, asking him to make the formal request to Kofi Annan.
That’s when the shocker came. In a letter to Johnson, dated
July 30th, Assistant Secretary of State Paul Kelly
told her that the United States had issued an invitation to
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
to serve as official observers for the November presidential
election.
“Who,” asked an entire nation, including most of Congress,
“is the OSCE?” For the record, it’s an international organization
of 55 nations from Europe, Central Asia and North America,
based in Vienna, Austria. The United States has been a participating
member since 1990. The OSCE calls itself the “largest regional
security organization in the world.” Its website says the
OSCE is “active in early warning, conflict prevention, crisis
management and post-conflict rehabilitation.”
Apparently, the OSCE is the bunch called in to make sure all
the new social democracies created after the fall of the Soviet
empire are overseen by the proper authorities. The group made
itself responsible for a wide range of security-related issues
including arms control, preventive diplomacy, confidence and
security building measures, human rights, democratization,
election monitoring, and even economic and environmental security.
It sounds like the makings of a world police force. And these
are the guys Colin Powell decided to bring to the United States
to police our election.
So, how well does the OSCE do its job? Well, according to
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX): “We should be wary about organizations
like the OSCE that seek to involve themselves in our electoral
process. The OSCE in particular has a terrible record in the
newly democratic countries of central Europe, where it normally
operates. According to groups that follow OSCE, this organization
does much more to undermine free elections than to promote
them.”
In Bosnia in 1996, Paul reports, the OSCE approved parliamentary
elections despite the fact that an impossible 107 percent
of the eligible voting-age population supposedly had voted.
“This year,” Paul said, “the OSCE approved the election of
Mikheil Saakashvili in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia
with a Saddam Hussein-like 97 percent of the vote.”
If that’s not bad enough, in July of this year, the OSCE elected
Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings to be president of its
Parliamentary Assembly. Alcee Hastings’ district includes
Broward County, one of the most contested in the 2000 election.
Hastings has not been an innocent bystander in the election
controversy. On June 14th he said, “anyway you
cut it, these people (the Bush Administration) are going to
try to steal this election.” Alcee Hastings is the man who
will pick where OSCE observers will be placed. He will also
have a major voice in the OSCE’s final report on the election.
So much for impartial observers. The fix is in.
And it gets even worse. Alcee Hastings is a former
federal judge who was impeached by the U.S. Congress in 1998
after being caught in an FBI sting operation for taking bribes.
The Congress voted 413 – 3 to impeach and remove Hastings
from the bench.
Now in Congress, Hastings hasn’t changed his shady ways. He
is currently under investigation by both the Federal and Florida
election commissions. There are also charges of cronyism and
intimidation flying around his re-election campaign. Apparently
Alcee is a real piece of work.
The question must be asked: what kind of organization elects
such a man as its president? And why in the world is the United
States involved with it, supplying money to the tune of $25
million? And why have we invited them to observe our elections?
Rep. Johnson says the OSCE is involved to “ensure free and
fair elections.” Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican also from
Texas, says he “smells politics.” That’s why he and ten fellow
members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary Powell requesting
some answers. Smith wants to know if the State Department
had planned to invite the OSCE even before receiving Johnson’s
letter. Smith also wants to know if the OSCE’s monitoring
of this year’s election is a direct response to the “contested
presidential election in 2000.” And above all, he has asked
Secretary Powell to reveal what cities and states the observers
will be deployed, as well as who determines these locations.
We obviously have one answer-- Alcee Hastings. But that didn’t
come from the State Department.
The
DeWeese Report called the State Department with some additional
questions. We want to know what kind of credentials the observers
would wear to alert voters to their presence. We also want
to know what official authority they would be operating under
and what, if any, influence they would wield over the elections.
No answers, either to The
DeWeese Report or Rep. Smith, have been received. All
of our questions were answered with, “we don’t know.” The
State Department will only say that the details will be determined
after members of the OSCE visit the U.S. in September. We
were told to call the OSCE directly for answers.
A spokesman for the OSCE in Vienna, said the group does not
have authority over election results in any way. “We don’t
give them a yes or no or grade them,” she said. “But we monitor,
we publicize what we see. You can call it political pressure.”
So here we have an international organization, with a budget
of over $200 million, invited by our own State Department
as a defensive maneuver against angry, radical Democrats still
sour over losing the last election. Under that banner, the
OSCE, led by an impeached and disgraced former judge, stands
ready to storm the American election with observations teams,
yet not a single American official knows where they will be
posted, what they will be authorized to do, or what authority
they will have in observing the elections. Meanwhile, the
OSCE is telling us that they will bring political pressure
to bear on what they see. Any guesses on what direction that
political pressure will take?
The United States is not a social democracy in which the all-powerful
central government controls the elections. Nor are we a third-world
delinquent where dictators must be watched to make sure they
aren’t taking off with the goods. We are a Republic, which
means our elections are not controlled by the federal government
in Washington, but rather by the states and local governments.
It’s the states that operate the elections and it’s the states
that certify them. Through that system, we have been holding
free and peaceful elections for two hundred years.
Allowing an outside policing agency to meddle in our elections
can only have devastating results. Imagine the 2000 election,
had the OSCE been involved. The Gore campaign raised questions
about the results. The battle went on for weeks. Instead of
having it decided in our own justice system, the issue may
have been resolved with international observers suddenly flashing
their badges and applying their “political pressure” to nullify
the outcome, making it nearly impossible for local election
officials to perform their jobs in a fair manner. As already
mentioned, follow-up recounts performed by private news organizations
who, frankly, would have been overjoyed to find a different
result, found only that the Bush lead increased with each
recount. That’s why the issue went away except in the minds
of Democrats like Eddie Bernice Johnson.
There’s more to consider in allowing foreign election
observers into this nation. Rep. Johnson and her crew try
to sell the OSCE observers as a way to “proudly show our democratic
system, warts and all.” But that’s not the game being played
here. This is about a political agenda to broadcast U.S. elections
as unfair and invalid. The true result of an invasion of foreign
observers would be to diminish our stature in the rest of
the world. It would intimidate American voters as they pass
by foreign officials wearing imposing badges of identification.
Above all, it would be an act of voluntary surrender of a
major piece of our national sovereignty.
The issue of allowing the OSCE to enter our nation to observe
our elections is not about guaranteeing free and fair elections.
The result will be just the opposite. It is a power grab of
massive proportions. The real game is the drive to erase our
sovereign borders and bring the U.S. into international submission.
If allowed to move forward, it is the first step in the final
drive to bury the United States forever in the dung heap of
the global village.
The line in the sand has been drawn. What will it be America?
Do we hang our heads in shame by allowing outside forces decide
how we conduct our national business or do we fight for our
liberty and independence by telling the Bush Administration
to rescind its invitation to the OSCE? The White House phone
number is (202) 456-1414. Make the call. Your liberty is at
stake.
