An International Election Monitoring Organization (EU) said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “concerned” that the “integrity of election day procedures” could be under threat and recommended re-sending observers to monitor the election.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)’s Democracy and Human Rights Arm has issued an assessment of election conditions in the run-up to the November 3 presidential and congressional elections.
The recommended member states send 100 observers in the long term and 400 in the short term to check the interview, which it said “will be the most challenging in the last decades”.
A mission of the OSCE’s Weekly Assessment of Needs by the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, beginning May 29, found that there was widespread concern that “election officials will face serious challenges prior to and on election day, due to new measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and expressed concern about their ability to overcome it. “
In the eyes of officials and experts on the review mission, the voting problems could “affect the level of confidence in electoral administration, which in turn could damage the integrity of election day traffic, and ultimately cast doubt on the outcome of the election.” elections ”.
Most of the officials and experts interviewed said they welcomed the presence of foreign election observers.
The ODIHR began overseeing U.S. elections following the dispute vote in 2000 which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. The size of the observation missions was increased in 2016, and the 2020 contingent will remain at that level.
In many U.S. states, there is no guarantee that international observers will be allowed in polling stations.
The tone of the 2020 ODIHR report reflects much more alarm than in 2016, noting that only some of its recommendations for improvements in the U.S. electoral system have been acted upon.
“Many of those recommendations have not been implemented,” said Dame Audrey Glover, a British human rights lawyer who led the 2016 U.S. election observation mission. “None of the federal has, but some of the states have, some rather spasmodically, executed pieces of it.”
Many of the 2016 ODIHR recommendations were on voting rights for minorities. In particular, the organization called on Congress to clear a hole in the Voting Rights Act made by a 2013 ruling that invalidates a clause in the act that underwent all new voting laws. which are subject to federal control by cities, counties or states with a history of racial discrimination.
The House of Representatives passed legislation to restore that control in 2019, but the Republican leadership has blocked the law from being debated in the House of Representatives.
The ODIHR also called on the US to review restrictions on voting rights for citizens with criminal convictions, and to ensure that rights are restored after completion of the sentence.
There has been some, albeit very moderate, movement on this issue. Since 2018, Florida, Iowa and Kentucky, the last three states to permanently unlock anyone with a conviction of crime, have all ended their life relationships. But in Florida, Republicans are undergoing reform, putting in place obstacles that still make it very difficult to vote. In Iowa and Kentucky, the governors have issued executive orders ending the ties, which could be revoked by a future governor. Many states continue to decipher people, even when they are out of prison.
There has also not been much movement on calling on ODIHR to end gerrymandering, and to set up independent agencies to draw district boundaries in a way that respects the equality of the vote.
Glover raised concerns about a shortage of pollsters and observers due to the pandemic and a lack of capacity of the postal service to deal with the flood of moods.
Despite the challenge presented by the November vote, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is implementing cost-saving measures, including securing management hires, ordered by the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a major Republican fundraiser appointed by Trump in May.
An ODIHR spokeswoman, Katya Andrusz, said: “Public confidence is a vital element of any democratic election process. If there is an important part of mistrust in one part of the system, then the confidence of the public in the whole process can weaken. “
