En Route to SFO

First, let me apologize for not writing sooner. I have had serious internet troubles over the last few days since I arrived in Bangkok (Tuesday) and I wanted to hold off making comments on the election until the NGOs presented their feedback.

I am about to board my flight to SFO, waiting in the Phnom Penh airport. Derek left a few days ago from Bangkok, and I just enjoyed 2 amazing days there of mostly R&R before starting this long journey. I will fly 4 hours to Taipei, and then 12 hours to SFO.

A brief update on the election: Derek and I were very impressed by the voting process itself, but we were quite disturbed by what we saw outside the voting booths. The voting went quite smoothly, with the one strange fact for me being there were five party observers in the room, and each person had to dip their finger in indelible ink after they voted to ensure there was no double counting.

The disturbing findings, echoed around Phnom Penh, were the large number of people who were not on the voting lists at all. It is hard to know how severe this problem was...but when you are bombarded with people (we met over 100 people between us in just a few hours) upset because they voted for years and now cannot vote, it seems large enough worth investigating. Almost every family seemed to have a few members who could not vote. We took names and sent them to our observer organization. They reported their concerns to UNDP ultimately, but on the whole, according to another observer I met in the airport who attended the UNDP briefing, people felt it was a fairly smooth election. The European Union Election Observation Mission called the 2008 election "showing some progress but falling short of key international standards."

I wonder if the UN staff feel like I did on Sunday - impotent, and wondering what was the value in my recording the problems when it was unlikely anything would be done about them. I am glad I participated in the process, but I hope, for the US elections, whoever observes will also speak up loudly and attempt to rectify any irregularities that occur during the day.