Latina Lista: News from the Latinx perspective > Palabra Final > Politics > International election watchers, threatened with arrest by Texas and Iowa officials, say main focus is demographic turnout

International election watchers, threatened with arrest by Texas and Iowa officials, say main focus is demographic turnout

LatinaLista — Recently, it was made known that the group of international election watchers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were warned off of observing Texas polls by the state’s attorney general threatening to arrest any of the watchers if they came within 100 feet of the polls. Now, shamefully, Iowa has followed the bad example of GOP Lone Star politicians.

(L-r) Eric Des Pallieres and Dragan Zelić, Long-term observers from the OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission to the 6 November 2012 General elections in the United States; Daan Everts, the Head of the Mission, and Goran Petrov, the Mission’s Election Analyst, watch Mark Anderson, Election Supervisor of Bay County, collect the printout from a ballot scanning machine during a test. Panama City, Florida, 24 October 2012. (Office of the Election Supervisor of Bay County)

The outrageous behavior of the Texas AG and now Iowa makes no sense until we see that one of the main interests of the international team is to look at the demographic turnout.

In other words, these election workers will be on the alert if voters of color are harassed or disenfranchised in any way. And what will they do that could make such powerful politicians fearful?

They would let the world know that what the United Stats demands from other countries, politicians within their own ranks would deny its own people.

This defiance has only put these international election watchers on alert to expect something — and they’re not the only ones. News stations are asking their viewers to let them know on election day if they have any problems at the voting polls.

A new organization has launched asking people to videotape their polls if they also encounter a problem and then upload the video to the site to share with the nation.

It doesn’t take a psychic or a team of international election observers to know that irregularities are bound to crop up in next week’s election but this time, unlike in the past, more people are ready for it.

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Comment(1)

  • Elia Esparza
    November 1, 2012 at 7:37 pm

    These obstructionist GOP are desperate and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to disqualify voters of color. I hope we’ve sufficiently informed voters of their rights and push back on intimination bullies.

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