May 03, 2005 

CLAO TO MONITOR THE LEBANESE ELECTIONS

The Council of Lebanese American Organizations (CLAO) will be monitoring the upcoming parliamentary elections in Lebanon.  The CLAO team is scheduled to gather in Beirut towards the last week of May.  The delegation will work with several local Lebanese groups and non-governmental organizations as well as international election monitors in the field. 

The CLAO team will collect its information through a variety of methods, including but not limited to:

1)  Interviews with experts and electoral officials.

2)  Assessment of obtainable electoral data related to registration rates, political independence of electoral officials, vote tabulation precision, registry purging, and other potential and actual voting irregularities.

3)  Meetings beforehand with a variety of ordinary voters and conducting of follow-up exit polling.

CLAO will issue a report associated with its findings which will be made available to the media and will later be submitted in separate report format to the US Department of State and the United Nations.

As an organization committed to democracy, CLAO places great emphasis on promoting the democratic process through sound and internationally acceptable elections. CLAO’s main objectives in its election observation activities are to ensure that the Lebanese parliamentary elections are free and fair now that the Syrian occupation has officially ended.