{"id":83,"date":"2004-08-09T09:31:08","date_gmt":"2004-08-09T13:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=83"},"modified":"2004-08-10T11:16:04","modified_gmt":"2004-08-10T15:16:04","slug":"a-step-in-the-right-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"A step in the right direction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like the Bush administration has actually done something I agree with.  The administration <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtontimes.com\/upi-breaking\/20040807-101537-3203r.htm\">has invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the 2004 presidential elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nProvided they do their job, I&#8217;ll be a lot more willing to accept the results of the election if the OSCE says everything went smoothly.  The 2000 elections I still have deep issues with.  Not that I think that Gore <strong><em>should<\/em><\/strong>  be in office.  However, I do think that the moment the courts had to get involved, the instant the question was raised about voting accuracy in an election that was so close, I think any decision rendered would have been tainted.  I really think we should have had another election, with a more clear procedure for recounting.  Yes, it would have been expensive, but can we put a price tag on proving that we are in for a penny, in for a pound with this democracy business?<\/p>\n<p>What does irk me, however, is that some lawmakers (guess which party affiliation) actually <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2004\/ALLPOLITICS\/08\/08\/international.observers\/index.html\">objected to having observers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The issue was hotly debated in the House, and Republicans got an amendment to a foreign aid bill that barred federal funds from being used for the United Nations to monitor U.S. elections, The Associated Press reported.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Exactly why would anyone object to this?  What do we have to hide here?  After all, they&#8217;re going to be here to ensure a fair and orderly electoral process, and that&#8217;s what we all want&#8230; right?  [\/innocence]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Presidential elections are to be monitored by the UN for fairness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}