UN election observers surprised no one needs an ID to vote in most states...

The UN observers claim such a system of trust wouldn't work in their country.  Newsflash, it doesn't work here.

"It's an incredible system," said Nuri K. Elabbar, who traveled to the United States along with election officials from more than 60 countries to observe today's presidential elections as part of a program run by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). Your humble Cable guy visited polling places with some of the international officials this morning. Most of them agreed that in their countries, such an open voting system simply would not work. 

"It's very difficult to transfer this system as it is to any other country. This system is built according to trust and this trust needs a lot of procedures and a lot of education for other countries to adopt it," Elabbar said.

The most often noted difference between American elections among the visitors was that in most U.S. states, voters need no identification. Voters can also vote by mail, sometimes online, and there's often no way to know if one person has voted several times under different names, unlike in some Arab countries, where voters ink their fingers when casting their ballots.

Good news: Texas threatens to arrest UN election observers...

Go get'em...

Via The Hill:

Texas authorities have threatened to arrest international election observers, prompting a furious response from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
“The threat of criminal sanctions against [international] observers is unacceptable,” Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said in a statement. “The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.”

Lawmakers from the group of 56 European and Central Asian nations have been observing U.S. elections since 2002, without incident. Their presence has become a flashpoint this year, however, as Republicans accuse Democrats of voter fraud while Democrats counter that GOP-inspired voter ID laws aim to disenfranchise minority voters.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott further fueled the controversy on Tuesday when he sent a letter to the OSCE warning the organization that its representatives “are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place” and that it “may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance.”

Keep on reading…

Holder dispatches federal observers to Milwaukee to monitor Walker recall

The Black panthers weren't available?

Washington (CNN) — The Justice Department Monday dispatched federal observers to Milwaukee to monitor the closely-watched recall election of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division said Milwaukee is among specific voting locations required to provide assistance to Spanish speaking citizens. . . .

The Justice Department declined to say how many monitors have been sent to these locations, but from past practice the number is likely in the dozens. In prior general elections, the Justice Department has sent as many as one thousand federal observers and civil rights attorneys to coordinate federal activities and work with local elections officials.