European Team to Observe US Election

The OSCE monitoring group is the first such team for a US presidential election. Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives requested UN monitors for this year's presidential elections in an effort to avoid possible voting irregularities that plagued the 2000 election. In a letter to the 13 Democrats, Assistant Secretary of State Paul Kelly did not mention the request for UN observers, but said the United States had already invited the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the 2004 presidential elections. The observer team will go to the United States in September to plan how to monitor the election, including how many observers to send and where to deploy them. The OSCE sent observers to the United States in November 2002 to monitor the US midterm elections as well as last year's election in California. OSCE members, including the United States, agreed in 1990 to allow fellow members to observe elections in one another's countries. (EUobserver.com)