(Editor’s note: The Hill reports President Trump is breaking more than two-decades of international election observers monitoring the November mid-term election. Laura Kelly in the article below provides the history of this effort and that the USA joins isolated autocratic regimes of Belarus and Russia.)
President Trump is breaking a more than two-decade-long tradition of welcoming a key group of international election observers to monitor the midterm contest, drawing criticism for discouraging democratic transparency.
The U.S. has routinely invited election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to observe and report on midterm and presidential contests since 2002. Election observations are carried out by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
Trump’s decision puts the U.S. in the same basket as the isolated, autocratic regimes of Belarus and Russia. Those countries have also rejected international observers, and their most recent elections were widely condemned as a sham.
The U.S. is one of the 57 members of the OSCE, an international body created after the Cold War to promote democracy and human rights in post-Soviet states. The U.S. hosting OSCE election observers is viewed as an important signal of transparency that encourages countries with more vulnerable democracies to open up their elections to observation and monitoring.
“The Trump Administration’s decision not to invite international observers to the United States is deeply antithetical to the spirit of freedom, democracy and transparency that defines our elections,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the outgoing ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
“I urge the Trump Administration to respect the role of independent election observers and ensure that the United States holds itself to the same standards that we would expect of any other democracy.”
Shaheen is also a member of the Helsinki Commission, an independent organization led by members of Congress and housed on Capitol Hill that monitors OSCE compliance in member states.
The election-monitoring mission of the OSCE’s human rights office, the ODIHR, does not have any enforcement mechanisms, and it does not determine whether an election is legitimate. Its purpose is to assess the election environment and make recommendations to bring it more in linewith OSCE commitments on democratic standards.
“No other nation has done more to advance the cause of human freedom and representative government. American elections will be administered, participated in, and observed by American citizens,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in response to a question about why the Trump administration withheld an invitation to the OSCE.
The Trump administration’s decision is “regrettable,” the ODIHR and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly said in a statement last month.
“After more than two decades in which the United States has welcomed OSCE observers to its federal elections, this decision represents a significant departure from an established democratic practice,” Pere Joan Pons, president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, said.
Despite its long history, the OSCE election-monitoring mission is a little obscure even among lawmakers and staff on Capitol Hill.
But the fact that the Trump administration knew of the practice and made a point to block election monitors is a red flag, said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), the House’s ranking member on the Helsinki Commission.
“I think Trump doesn’t want any observers at all because I think he’s got some hijinks that he’s going to lay on the nation on Election Day,” Cohen, who is retiring from Congress at the end of this term after his seat was redistricted, told The Hill.
“I think this is a tip, when you say you don’t want the OSCE observers, that means there’s something you don’t want to observe.”
Likewise, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the Senate’s ranking member on the Helsinki Commission, called the absence of OSCE observers a “warning sign for democracy” in a statement to The Hill.
“The OSCE has been observing American elections for over twenty years, and has been welcomed by administrations of both parties, including Trump 1.0,” he said.
“Booting the OSCE monitors is a warning sign for democracy that puts the U.S. in the company of Russia and Belarus.”
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), the chair and co-chair of the Helsinki Commission, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Trump’s critics are concerned that the president is laying the groundwork to disrupt or dispute election returns that don’t favor Republican candidates, in the same vein of his rejection of his 2020 election loss to former President Biden.
“A defining characteristic of a strong, secure democracy is its willingness to subject its electoral processes to independent scrutiny,” read a statement from the Democracy Renewal Group.
The organization was founded by about 200 former U.S. Agency for International Development staff members, who were purged with the Trump administration’s gutting of the agency, and other democracy and governance professionals and consultants.
Democracy Renewal Group condemned the exclusion of election monitors.
“If this decision stands, the United States will join a notorious group of countries too threatened by independent scrutiny to invite observers: Russia, Belarus, and Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic in 2000,” the group wrote.
State officials, mostly Democrats, are preparing for and thinking about any way the Trump administration could try to assert federal control over state-administered elections, according to a report on VoteBeat.org, a nonpartisan news site reporting on elections and voting. Their concerns include the possibility of immigration officers being dispatched to polling stations and federal attempts to seize ballots.implementing an executive order widely criticized as restricting Americans’ access to mail-in voting was celebrated by voting rights advocates and Democrats.
The Supreme Court’s decision last month to block Trump from implementing an executive order widely criticized as restricting Americans’ access to mail-in voting was celebrated by voting rights advocates and Democrats.
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), a member of the Committee on House Administration, which has oversight of federal elections, said he is talking with election officials about preparing to challenge any attempts by the Trump administration to disenfranchise American voters.
“I don’t want to overreact to the president, but yes, we are doing draft pleadings,” he said in an interview with MS NOW.
“We’re talking to lawyers all over this country. We’re prepared, but people should have confidence and should go out and vote.”
(Footnote: We try to limit sharing pieces we read from outside publications. However, with the mid-term election more news and opinions are being generated.)