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– What we point out as very regrettable is that a head of state casts doubt on a democratic institution as important as the electoral institute, without any documentation in this regard. We have expressed great concern about this, Kari Henriksen tells NTB, and calls it an undermining of democratic principles.
He has led a team of 50 election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who were invited by the United States to observe the elections. Also, there is a group of long-term observers in the United States. No systematic errors were observed.
– On the contrary, all the observers who were at the polling stations experienced that it was an incredibly accurate and very dedicated voting staff that reviewed the ballots in a very adequate way. The actual conduct of the elections was well organized despite the great challenges they faced, Henriksen says, referring to the crown pandemic.
Trust the implementation
– Does that mean that the electoral result is reliable?
– This means that the choice is reliable, that’s our conclusion, says Henriksen.
He emphasizes that this was also confirmed through conversations with other actors, politicians from both parties, the media and analysts.
The OSCE, for its part, harshly criticizes Donald Trump’s accusations that the election was stolen and that there has been widespread electoral fraud, without having documented it.
– When the head of state casts doubt on the electoral system without presenting evidence of it, it is a way of undermining democratic principles, says Henriksen.
Judgment critic
The OSCE also expresses concern that there were many legal procedures that marked the election even before Election Day, and that continued during and after the elections.
– We registered that there were more than 400 trials before and during the elections, many of them promoted by political parties. There was disagreement on electoral policy. The decentralized system in the United States means that politics is quickly implemented in the provisions associated with the election, Henriksen says.
– Did it affect the development of the election?
– We are not saying that it affected the election, but that it generated uncertainty and additional work for electoral personnel. And it created uncertainty for voters, including what applies to the rules for votes by mail, Henriksen says.
Observers
On the day of the elections, the observers were present at the polling stations. There they talked with the poll workers, observed and saw that everything was going well.
A contentious issue after the election has been claims by Republicans that their poll watchers should keep their distance while watching the count. This applied to all observers, Henriksen says, and he believes it was handled in a good way.
– An appeal was made to the court and a note was taken. That is what should happen in a democratic society, that you have the opportunity to appeal and that you have an impartial evaluation, says Henriksen.
The OSCE has also criticized rules that make it difficult for some, such as ex-convicts, to participate in elections and that in some places there were fewer voting centers than before.
Underfunded polling stations
The organization is also critical of the situation in some polling stations, which said they did not have enough funding to run the election safely in terms of infection control.
Among other things, several polling stations had to seek the support of private donors for technical equipment to handle the numerous votes by mail.
– We believe that funding should be sufficient to be carried out properly and safely, says Henriksen.
In future, the OSCE will monitor how the election result is handled before drafting a final report. Several lawsuits have been filed.
– We do not go into them, but we will record the deficiencies in how they can be managed. It is the state’s job to ensure that litigation is properly handled, Henriksen says.
