I’ve seen it for Venezuela and Syria, but i’m sure i could find this for quite a lot of other countries.
We’re usually saying that it would legitimize these elections, and are asking instead that the opponents boycott them. We can continue to criticize the biases surrounding the votes instead of the votes themselves if that’s the problem.
Some leaders may believe that the processus of elections is biased because unjust external pressures are putting a strain on the country and strengthening the opposition ; but, despite that, some of them are still asking for international observers, which could be an occasion to seize, instead of refusing to send them yet accusing them of cheating.
So i wonder if i’m missing something by thinking that we don’t want to legitimate the whole process by counting the votes.
For them it seems like it would be the same if they’re already asking, but for us it could open our societies to accusations of double standards since it could be argued that our own elections aren’t perfect.
In the end sanctions would stay in place so it wouldn’t be useful in any way, and doesn’t matter, i should probably delete this post but i’m leaving it in the off-chance that some find an interest in it.
If you had the initial thought that international observers won’t prevent cheating : they would count in double the votes, with the venezuelans of their area, and have everything under their eyes from the beginning of the vote to the end of the official count, so i don’t see how cheating would be possible.
For now, our version is that they’re miscounting the votes, yet we’re refusing to send such observers.
We’re usually saying that it would legitimize these elections
Imagine the audacity of the US to say they legitimized an election when one of their own parties, previous president, and losing candidate can’t legitimize the past election and is already refusing to legitimize the next one.
If he’s re-elected then perhaps that international observers with an absence of electronic voting could be approved by both sides and prevent such doubts from being formulated again. Observers may be considered humiliating for a great power but could perhaps be generalised to every representative republic, if only in order to prevent such excuses ?
I hate the implication that there are two sides. While I agree that US politics has broken into two teams, I think the ideal situation would be that there is only one team (the country as a whole), and that the voting system would not need observers from the candidates’ parties to ensure that no one each cheating. Instead, every single one of us should be expected to be vigilant and protect democracy as a fundamental virtue of our society.
My personal belief is that having someone from the Trump party is basically having someone with increased access to cheat. They are not trying to enforce democracy. They are trying to dismantle it so that they could stay in power. Trump doesn’t believe the election was a fraud based on objective information and rational logic. He believes it because he is severely mentally ill and needs the delusion to avoid a deep sense of shame and despair. As such, there is nothing anyone could say for him to accept that the election is valid.
If we were going to accept that Trump will not be punished for his crimes nor go away, then we need to find an avenue for him to be able to come up with a delusion that maintains that he “won”. Not that he won the election per say, but that he “won the battle between him and Joe Biden” and “is better than him”. Again, ideally, we wouldn’t want to enable a narcissistic personality, but if we were going to, then we would have to find a way to do so and maintain democracy at the same time. Having observers will not achieve this because his personality holds that he is better, so any facts that refute this will be dismissed.
(i didn’t know that, it’d require more researchs than i did on the claims of each side, they’d perhaps say that the coverage was insufficient).
In my opinion we don’t have anything to lose by strengthening our electoral system, and every accusation is an occasion to improve it, unless you think that it is already failproof, i’ve seen long lists of arguments at the end of 2020, but John Oliver also made three videos on the topic of fraud prior to that, and our side didn’t hesitate to have doubts twice on the results for Bernie Sanders, whether it happened or not, i do think that cheating is a serious possibility and that such claims should be solved by better measures to please the future candidates/incumbents, instead of only relying on censorship(, youtube, facebook, twitter, …). To sum up, he did commit to a peaceful transition, and we don’t have much to lose by implementing an even stronger surveillance of the procedure for the next elections.To sum up, he did commit to a peaceful transition,
I don’t know if you are referring to Trump, but if you are, I disagree. My position is that he attempted to overthrow the election with a flood of false claims and frivolous lawsuit, intimidating state election authorities to sway the election in his favor, and the whole Jan 6 insurrection. If you don’t agree that’s fine, but I would like to not discuss that. If anyone at this point disagrees, then there is no point in having a discussion about it because we are not working in the same reality with the same rules for logic.
we don’t have much to lose by implementing an even stronger surveillance of the procedure for the next elections.
My argument is that placing people loyal to Trump in any process that involves handling or monitoring the election is giving them an opportunity to cheat the election in favor of Trump. Trump have convincingly demonstrated a complete lack of integrity and connection with reality. If you disagree, that’s fine as well. However, I do not want to debate that for the same reasons as above.
Fair enough, i’ll just point out that with such enhanced surveillance it’d be even more difficult than currently(, and ideally impossible,) for people loyal(, or hostile,) to Trump to cheat the election. Thanks for the chat
Thanks for the chat
Same! 🙂
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Maybe we should some to their next one to make sure it’s actually democratic
Do you think America is some bastion of fairness and truth? Most of the countries that are stricken with corruption and poverty are that way because the USA meddled with their shit.
The USA should stay the fuck in its own country, and stop influencing the weak countries of the world.
I mean if you send them to Russia to check that the next Putin vote count is “correct”, then it would just make the whole voting farce somewhat credible.
Because the votes are counted in a wrong way, or because he got rid of the opposition, or because he’s controlling the medias ? The first one is false, even western surveys confirmed his support, but the second and third one could be debated, yet it gets interesting since we could throw the same accusations at our own countries(, it’s very difficult to launch a new political party in France since you need an agreement from hundreds of mayors who reserve them to mainstream candidates, and almost impossible to be known without at least a bit of support from mainstream(legacy) medias, Internet could perhaps change that one day but we’re not (t)here yet).
You’re changing the question here, all democratic countries has their flaws for diverse reasons (France would be that as there is a two round system, lots of small parties would undermine the democratic outcome, I guess. Sometimes it’s history, almost always it can be better. But we’re democracies at least).
Russia is a dictatorship.
They want Legitimacy and if we, the west, sends people, and even better, we send people and they find no errors (in the small thing they investigate because believe me, Russia won’t allow us to send people checking out other things), that will bring Legitimacy to the dictatorship.
I’m glad to talk with someone “normal” like you, it’s actually becoming quite rare on Lemmy :)
Would you mind giving me a single thing that Russia has and we have not ? Media control ? Political prisoners ? Excessive laws ? Unsatisfactory election process ? What else ?
Keep in mind that the recent arrests were done in times of war, not only under a ukrainian pressure but quite a lot of other stuff like sanctions, covert actions, a blown-up gazoduc, …, Ukraine did hundreds of times worse and it’s not always justified, but surely you can easily find other proofs of Russia’s dictatorship to make me see the light ? I would unironically feel indebted to you if you took the time to correct me from my misconceptions, and we could take another country if you prefer.
Our media are controlled by capitalists(, except public&alternative medias).
We have a long list of political prisoners, it doesn’t stop at J.Assange, we’re also wiretapped among other measures to prevent any revolution.
We have laws against extremists or domestic terrorists, also against illegal speeches, more and more on the Internet. Could be worse, isn’t going to be better apparently.
Please tell me what you’re thinking about that makes them a dictatorship and not us.
Oh no, a Russ bot, how unsatisfying.
Oh, interesting. Is OP actually a bot?
I assumed it was a Russian user spreading misinformation. Maybe the weak grasp on English is an AI thing instead of non-native speaker thing in this case. It got me.
Nah, just an astroturfer. Apparently he’s doing it for free too lol.
Yeah, i know, i’m paid a lot
But don’t you find it interesting to challenge our preconceptions ? To learn how to defend our beliefs ?
I think i could almost defend all of our declared enemies if you’re uneasy with Russia, and criticize almost all of our allies. In the end i believe that we(sterners) are the one launching hostilities, and that a world peace is desirable&possible.
But if you don’t mind i’d like to try convincing someone that our point of view is erroneous, even if i won’t insist if you don’t feel like talking about that.
Do you know why we consider that some states are illegitimate “regimes” ? Do they deserve it for human rights or are they just annoying because they’re opposing our hegemonic expansion/uniformisation(, first anti-communist, now anti-islamist, then whatever else survived the colonization) ?
It doesn’t seem that we’ll be able to play the policemen of the world for long, yet inequalities between countries aren’t being reduced, since they’re increasing then perhaps that our control could go on for centuries ?(And on your argument about legitimacy it may be more honest to talk about what precedes the votes rather than the votes themselves if the latter were counted correctly, no ?)
“We” meaning the US?
Which country is asking us to send observers and we’re saying no?
I’m 100% sure for Venezuela and could find you the source, Europe said they didn’t have time despite being asked more than 6 months prior to the elections(, and still having 1-2 months ahead of them).
For Syria i’m almost certain, but i think that i could find the same for Cuba, probably Zimbabwe and in any case i’ve read such suspicions about Russia and Iran, we even showed videos of a ballon in front of the c.c.t.v. for Russia, even if the surveys proved that V.Putin’s support was/is legitimate, on which country would you like sources ?
In general, every government qualified as a “regime” is considered as cheating at elections, i don’t see an exception.Sure, I would love to see those sources if you find them. Venezuela and Russia, if you would.
I can’t find this source again(, when they said that they lacked time to send observers), it wasn’t talked much at the time, but i’m positive it happened, here’s an example of refusal for 2020 though : https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-eu-says-it-wont-send-observers-to-monitor-venezuelan-election-due-to/
Apparently, they’ve agreed to send observers in 2021 : https://www.postguam.com/the_globe/world/maduro-electoral-observers-from-eu-delegation-of-spies/article_8df8438a-50d1-11ec-b8be-13b5cf9ed4e5.html
The last time was in 2015, once again at the request of the venezuelan government : https://www.eeas.europa.eu/node/26227_en
Some people say that the government won’t ask again in 2024 : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-will-not-allow-eu-election-observers-2024-vote-lawmaker-2023-07-13/
But i’ve clearly overestimated the impact : Venezuela will still be sanctioned and the public opinion will still consider that they’re miscounting the votes. Allowing international observers or not doesn’t change anything in the end, we’ll only be satisfied once the socialist revolution is out, and will continue to accept unsatisfying electoral conditions with our allies(, e.g., in Africa).
You’ll need to read pro-venezuelans medias to see the other point of view.As for Russia, you’ll mostly find articles saying that his disapproval rate is at an all-time high, but this kind of article, or statista, are confirming that he’s one of the most popular president in the world. I could easily find more sources for this, so the reasoning is that when you’re so overwhelmingly popular there’s no need to miscount the votes in your favor :
Are you unsatisfied with the sources or my conclusions ?
Well, the sources are satisfying in that they disprove a lot of what you’re saying. Venezuela was declined once while most of the time observers were sent. And you were unable to find sources for Russia at all.
You’re evidently right, but many articles for the 2021 elections(, 1, 2, 3, …, including the one cited), said that it has been 15 years since the EU sent observers.
In any case i would like to emphasised that this debate isn’t useful : even if westerners systematically sent observers they would still claim that the results are illegitimate because of the overall process(, which deserve some explanations/debates because our own system is far from perfect, and we’re blending the consequences&causes of the sanctions, etc.). I should have deleted this post like i intended at first once i realized that.
A few more minutes of research wielded these results :
- EU won’t send observervation mission in Bangladesh : https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/eu-wont-send-observeration-mission-3424326
- The United States, European Union, France and Japan say they have no plans to send electoral observers or to provide assistance to Cambodia : https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/election-international-observers-03312023140751.html
- The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will not send observers to Russia’s upcoming elections for the first time in nearly three decades : https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-elections-osce-observers/31393760.html(, “The insistence of the Russian authorities on limiting the number of observers we could send without any clear pandemic-related restrictions has unfortunately made today’s step unavoidable. The OSCE had been invited to observe the Russian elections, but the number of allowed observers was later restricted to 60 due to what Russian authorities cited as the deteriorating pandemic situation in the country. (…) The OSCE had assessed earlier this year that it needed 80 long-term and 420 short-term observers.”)
- The European Union has scrapped plans to send observers to a parliamentary election in Ethiopia next month : https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/eu-scraps-plan-observe-ethiopia-election-2021-05-04(, criticism of their official reasons here https://euobserver.com/opinion/152293 : « The International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute sent missions to observe, and the African Union sent 120 observers. Yet the EU decided against sending a delegation, despite promises earlier in the year to do so. (…) The African Union’s observer team has praised the election, as have ambassadors from Sweden and Denmark. », that’s exactly an example of what i’m talking about, with false excuses/pretexts.
I didn’t write that we refused to send international observers to Russia, but that « i’ve read such suspicions about Russia and Iran, we even showed videos of a ballon in front of the c.c.t.v. for Russia », despite « the reasoning that when you’re so overwhelmingly popular there’s no need to miscount the votes in your favor ».
It appears that we did send international observers(, until 2021), but my point is that it wasn’t necessary, yet we’re still showing suspicions(, e.g. the balloon in front of a c.c.t.v. to take an example).I’d just like to end by saying once again that this whole debate is pointless because it doesn’t change anything in the end, whether we systematically refused to send observers, or always sent them while accusing the whole “democratic” process instead(, it’s apparently in-between, but much more the latter than the former, contrary to what i initially thought).
I should have deleted this post from the start like i first intended once i realised, in the selftext, that « In the end sanctions would stay in place so it wouldn’t be useful in any way, and doesn’t matter, i should probably delete this post but i’m leaving it in the off-chance that some find an interest in it. »Sorry if you felt that i wasted your time.
