Sandmonkey has an update on the Egyptian elections taking place very soon. In sum, the NGOs want to monitor the election, the electoral commission said no, the courts said yes, the commission said “screw you,” and for some reason a delegation from the House of Representatives doesn’t mind.

It goes back to the judicial rebellion a couple of months ago, when somewhere around 4000 judges all demanded that they be given complete oversight of the election process, not limited to just the polls as the government has tried to do. Most of the fraud will occur behind the scenes, after the polls have closed, during the counting process. This is the portion that the NGOs and judges want to monitor, but the government won’t allow. And at this point, it looks as if the government is admitting that the judiciary is completely irrelevant in an authoritarian system.