October 30, 2008
International Election Observers for the 2008 United States Presidential Election
We, the undersigned non-governmental organizations in the United States, hereby petition the United Nations through the Economic and Social Council for protection of our human rights through provision of election observers and monitors for the upcoming U. S. Presidential election on November 4th, 2008. We request observers to assess the breadth of voting irregularities and document any voting rights violations that may occur during this 2008 presidential election. In light of the critical importance of the right to representation in our government, guaranteed through U.S., law including documents such as the Bill of Rights and Constitution and legal precedent, United Nations’ documents to which the U.S. is a party such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, we are requesting international assistance in providing non-partisan witness to the process and assuring to the extent possible universal voting rights for the entire U.S. citizenry this November, 2008.
We are requesting this assistance due to serious concerns regarding enfranchisement in the upcoming 2008 presidential election based both on historical discrimination and exclusion of the rights of certain populations to vote and to have their votes counted. There is broad evidence from both the U.S. Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, that there were patterns of election fraud, voter suppression and intimidation. The gold standard of predicting the outcome of elections, exit polls, which have continued to be more reliable over time, showed clear victory of the Democratic Candidate in both of these Presidential elections. A much delayed count of all the actual ballots in Florida from the 2000 elections, showed that the Democratic Candidate had in fact won the vote; unfortunately, a complete recount had been denied at the time of the election.
While the world is perhaps most aware of evidence in the state of Florida in 2000 and the state of Ohio in 2004, there are much broader patterns of tampering with the vote that lead numerous election experts and much of the U.S. public to believe that the U.S. may have experienced two illegitimate elections. This, in addition to and potentially informed by historical problems and voting rights violations in previous elections and significant evidence of violations leading up to this 2008 election, give reasons to believe election fraud and voter suppression may be equally or more widespread this election. Sources of possible remedy from within the U.S. to date have been attempted and have been insufficient to protect our rights or the integrity of our elections.
We recognize that the most fundamental purpose of election observers is to verify the fairness of elections. We also recognize that the baseline of international standards for fair voting cannot be met in the U.S. electoral system, which essentially consist of 52 different electoral states each of which is overseen by a politically partisan administration. However, it is the very partisan nature of our oversight that determines the critical need for non-partisan observers from outside our country. Given the world impact of U.S. elections and our government’s stated mission of bringing democracy to the rest of the world, the importance of world scrutiny of the reasonable accuracy of U.S. elections is critical both to the protection of the human rights of the U.S. people and the interests of the rights of many across the world.
No More Stolen Elections!, P.O. Box 260217, Madison, WI 53726-0217 USA
Global Exchange, 2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor - San Francisco, CA 94110 USA
Liberty Tree, 122 State Street, Suite 405, Madison, WI 53704 USA
TrueVote.US, 2842 N. Calvert St. , Baltimore, MD 21218 USA
Economic Human Rights Project, 10 Oxford St., #2R, Worcester, MA 01609 USA
