WASHINGTON: A group of opposition Democrats in the House of Representatives has asked United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan to send UN observers to November's presidential election.

"We are deeply concerned that the rights of US citizens to vote in free and fair elections are again in jeopardy," the members of Congress wrote on July 1. Two week later, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, in observance of UN policy - which dictates requests for election observers be made by a representative of the 'member state' - wrote US Secretary of State Colin Powell urging him to formally make the request.

The demand reflects the continuing influence of the bitterly contested presidential election in 2000, in which studies have shown as many as six million votes were not counted.

Prior to 2002 voting for state governors, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, a Warsaw-based human rights organization, travelled to the United States to observe voting in the State of Florida - whose controversial voting results in 2000 finally won President George W. Bush the election - and other areas of the country.

That mission submitted a report on November 5, 2002 on the shortcomings of the elections, remedial measures that were adopted for them and recommendations for improvements to be implemented in 2004.

Johnson cited that report in her letter to Powell as a precedent for using international observers. "Given the deeply troubling events of the 2000 election, the growing concerns about the lack of necessary reforms and potential abuse in the 2004 election, we believe that the engagement of international election monitors can be the catalyst to expedite the necessary reform, as well as reduce the likelihood of questionable practices and voter disenfranchisement on election day," she wrote.

"As election day approaches, some voters are experiencing an eerie sense of dij' vu. Issues such as faulty ballot design, lack of paper receipts, new electronic voting terminals, training of poll workers and certification of state voter lists still remain," said a press release from Johnson's office.

Moreover, Florida continues to be embroiled in a controversy involving the purging of legal voters from the rolls, despite steps it has taken to prevent a repeat of the mistakes made in the 2000 election.

The Florida Election Reform Act of 2001 ensures that the administration will not contract out the compiling of voter rolls - which resulted in a number of lawsuits against the state following the 2000 election - and has developed a central database of voters; however questions still remain about the accuracy of voter rolls.

In the letter to Annan, the House Democrats related growing concerns over November's voting to the 2000 election. "We are hoping that our actions will alleviate the nation from the suffering it took in 2000 when things went awry at the ballot box," they wrote.

The letter requested that the electoral assistance division of the UN department of political affairs send the observers. It also cited a report by the US Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan federal agency that investigated widespread allegations of voter disenfranchisement and questionable practices in Florida relating to the purging of names from voter registration lists, methods of balloting and the independence of counting and certification procedures.

The report, released in June 2001, concluded that the electoral process in the state resulted in the denial of the right to vote for countless persons and that the "disenfranchisement of Florida's voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters" and poor counties.

Response to the Democrats' letter has been mixed. Global Exchange, an international human rights organization that has carried out election monitoring in 10 countries around the world, cited it as further justification for its Fair Elections initiative.

The initiative will host international election monitors in the United States this fall in two stages. First, a 20-person delegation will monitor pre-electoral conditions during a Sept 14-26 visit. An eight-person delegation will return to the United States during the week preceding the November 2 election.

In mid-October the first delegation will release a report detailing its conclusions and offering recommendations - if any - for improving voting procedures and building civic trust.

Global Exchange says monitors will conduct their investigations using a variety of methods, including interviews with experts and electoral officials; evaluation of data on registration rates, registry purging and felon disenfranchisement; comparing various voting technologies; and informal meetings with a range of ordinary citizens.

The monitors are scheduled to travel to the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio and Washington DC. But Thomas P. Kilhannon, the founder of Freedom Alliance, an extreme right wing, Virginia-based group, released a letter condemning Johnson's efforts to bring the election observers to the United States.

"Your appeal to the secretary-general is alarming and embarrassing. As a member of Congress sworn to uphold the constitution and represent the people of the United States, it is disturbing, to say the least, that you would entrust the most sacred act of American democracy - our presidential election - to an international institution that is unaccountable to the American people and mired by scandal and corruption."

The letter went on to challenge the integrity of the United Nations. "The United Nations, which counts among its members state sponsors of terrorism, human rights abusers, dictatorships and repressive monarchies, is simply unfit and unqualified to comment in any way on the manner in which this great Republic chooses it commander- in-chief."

But in a news conference, Johnson argued "it is imperative that there be some type of independent monitoring for this fall's election. The United Nations provides this assistance for other (UN) member countries. Why not the United States? We are not above the law. Nor are we above asking for assistance." -Dawn/The InterPress News Service.