the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 12, 2012
On election day November 6, a delegation of international observers, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), came to monitor U.S. elections in 40 states. The attorney general of Texas threatened to arrest them.
A Fox News pundit questioned the need for monitors, stating the U.S. is not “some third-world dictatorship masquerading as a legitimate democracy.”
But how else to describe the U.S. system that throws up ridiculous barriers to voting: elections on a work day, draconian voter ID laws, changing polling places with no notice, limiting early voting, requiring absentee ballots to not have instructions, 10 page ballots in Florida, and so on.
The fevered pitch of voter suppression attempts this year rekindled memories of the Jim Crow South and seemed to backfire. With strengthened resolve, voters in Miami, Florida stood in line in the rain, more than seven hours, before completing their ballots long after 1AM.
Doesn’t this sound like a 4th world country in need of election monitors!