Tom Deweese
October 14, 2004
Washington,D.C.--The U.S. State Department has opened a Pandora's box by inviting international monitors to oversee our Election Day process, says the american Policy Center (aPC). The Center cited news that seven leftist organizations recently petitioned the United Nations to monitor next month's presidential election.
Tom DeWeese, the president of the Center, a grassroots activist organization located in suburban Washington, D.C., is warning that, "a foreign election monitoring debacle could spell the end of our democratic process as we know it."
The seven organizations, a hodgepodge of "welfare rights" groups and international war protesters, have asked the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for U.N. intervention in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The groups claim that, by funneling their request through ECOSOC, all that's required for U.N. observers to invade the U.S. electoral process next month is the approval of the 54-nation ECOSOC council.
Earlier, the Center warned that, when the U.S. State Department invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the U.S. election in November, it opened the door for international intrusion into our democratic process.
Since the OSCE invitation, the far-left pressure group Global Exchange announced that it too would be disbursing handpicked international observers to monitor polling stations in five key battleground states. "With this third group entering the fray," says DeWeese, "it is clear that the drive to put our nation's electoral process under the purview of some international authority is a serious goal of the left.
"The american people deserve to know where their elected officials stand on this unprecedented abdication of our national sovereignty," declared DeWeese. He noted that this is the first time in our nation's history that international observers will monitor and scrutinize our presidential election with the potential for "actively trying to influence its outcome.
"Thanks to the State Department, the global socialists now smell blood in the water and will not stop until unaccountable, international bureaucrats become a fixture in our electoral process," said DeWeese.
"What started out as a ludicrous request by 13 leftist Congressmen has turned into a bona fide movement," said DeWeese, referring to a letter that Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and a dozen congressional colleagues sent to Kofi annan, asking him to send U.N. monitors for this year's election. annan replied that the U.N. could only respond to a State Department invitation.
Even this is in dispute. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has said that any foreign monitoring of the U.S. election as a whole will violate american sovereignty, citing article II of the Constitution that specifically assigns the conduct of elections to the States. Thus, says Rep. Paul, the State Department invitation was improper.
DeWeese stressed that the seven groups calling for U.N. monitoring want the global body to preside over U.S. elections because it carries the force of international law. "By calling for international law to govern our democratic process, these seven organizations essentially want the United Nations to certify our election results.
"Every american who is concerned with our right to conduct our own democratic elections, free from foreign intervention, must speak up. a major pillar of our national sovereignty is at stake."
The Center is calling on american citizens to contact their local and state electoral boards and demand that international election monitors not be permitted access.