Finnish MP reports election observers turned away from Florida Republican office

Kimmo Kiljunen

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Election monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) received a nasty shock on Monday in Orlando, Florida: Republicans would not admit them into their local election HQ.
      "They didn't want to see us. The reception was rather brusque", reported Finnish MP Kimmo Kiljunen (SDP), one of the observer team from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, who was contacted by phone from the Finnish News Agency.
      According to Kiljunen, some of the Republicans may have suspected that the international observers were working on behalf of their Democrat rivals. "This is of course utter nonsense in any case", stressed Kiljunen.
      "It may have been that the local election workers had not been informed of our arrival. I hope it was merely a misunderstanding. We are going to visit another Republican election office."
     
The election monitors have also spent the past few days inspecting polling stations and have met with some members of Congress. Kiljunen regarded it as slightly disturbing that the campaigning in the U.S. Presidential Elections has extended right up to the doors of polling stations.
      Equally, not all voters have been able to keep their selection a secret, he commented.
      "In one polling station, the voting machine was in such an open location that it was easily possible to see from the side whom the voters supported", said the MP.
      Kiljunen will be spending Election Day in Jacksonville, in the north of the state, where it was alleged that the greatest number of infractions and election irregularities took place four years ago. Voting in Florida - seen as a key swing state in the race for the White House between incumbent George W. Bush and his Democrat challenger John Kerry - has been brisk, with as many as two million people going to the polls in advance.


Links:
  OSCE: ODIHR Election Observation Mission to the United States

Helsingin Sanomat