Foreign Monitors Barred From Polls

Some observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a Europe-wide security and rights forum, were barred from entering some polling stations in the United States on Tuesday, one of them said.

"We were not allowed to enter polling stations," said Soeren Soendergaard, a Danish parliamentary deputy.

"Although we were officially invited to follow the (US presidential) election, the message was not passed on to the polling stations," he told the Danish news agency Ritzau.

He said he had been personally refused admission at three out of four polling stations in Columbus, Ohio.

Hey, I understand the American arrogance behind keeping these furriners out. But why were they here?

The OSCE team was invited by the State Department. They were not conducting full-scale monitoring but collecting impressions of American democratic practice for a later report.