BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

26/10/2008

Soffer Sees Belarus Voting Methods First-Hand

By Wes Clement/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

Most would agree the process of conducting elections in the United States is not perfect. However, Stu Soffer, a member of the Jefferson County Election Commission, has once again gained a renewed appreciation for just how good the system is.

When the only thing receiving as much public attention as presidential and vice presidential candidates was talk of Wall Street troubles in late September, Soffer was boarding a plane to Belarus where Parliamentary elections would soon be under way.

He served as one of 320 international election observers from 43 countries who worked with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in an attempt to help the former Soviet republic conduct a proper and transparent election.

He was assigned to Homyel, a city of 500,000 residents in the southeastern part of the country near its border with Ukraine.

"The election workers really tried to do everything by the book there, but not in some of the other places," Soffer said.

He said he was impressed with how knowledgeable and serious about performing their duties correctly the poll chairmen and workers in his assigned area were. He suspects it is a result of their many years of not having an opportunity to participate in an open election.

Some fellow observers assigned to different cities, however claimed individuals apparently tied to the nation's government acted to intimidate them and deny access to monitoring the election process.

Soffer's Russian co-observer, Victor, was helpful in dealing with the few Russian speaking people who attempted to deny the pair access to polling sites, he said.

OSCE reported the count was assessed as 'bad' or 'very bad' in 48 percent of polling stations visited.

"Despite some minor improvements, the 28 September parliamentary elections in Belarus ultimately fell short of OSCE commitments for democratic elections," a September 29 OSCE preliminary statement reported.

Many Belarus citizens had a positive attitude about the election and focused on its improvement, Soffer said.

"It was pretty obvious who was going to win by seeing how the campaigns were conducted," he said.

Soffer speculated the reason some of the vote count tampering occurred was to eliminate the possibility of having to hold a runoff election.

"We don't have perfect elections in the U.S. because people make mistakes, but most people don't realize how good we have it," he said.

Source:

http://www.pbcommercial.com/articles/2008/10/26/news/news8.txt

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