For the First Time Since 2002, No OSCE Observers Were Invited to a U.S. Election - So European Groups Will Assess the Midterms Remotely, Reporting November 2
The OSCE has observed 12 U.S. federal elections, six of them midterms. This year there is no invitation - and the gap has produced a remote assessment, a Senate rebuke, and a State Department answer about limited resources.
WASHINGTON - The United States did not invite the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to observe Tuesday's midterm elections - the first U.S. federal election without an OSCE invitation since the organization began observing American elections in 2002, across 12 federal elections, six of them midterms. The OSCE's election office, ODIHR, and its Parliamentary Assembly said in a joint statement on September 23 that they regretted the decision, that it was not in line with commitments made by all member states under the 1990 Copenhagen Document, and Parliamentary Assembly President Pere Joan Pons called it a significant departure from established democratic practice.
The absence now has a substitute, of a limited kind. MEMO 98 and Election-Watch.EU announced on October 27 that they have launched an International Remote Election Assessment of the November 3 congressional elections, supported by the European Partnership for Democracy, with a pre-election report due November 2 and a final report after the vote. The groups state their limits plainly: the assessment is conducted remotely, through documentary research, expert analysis and interviews with U.S. stakeholders, it involves no direct observation of polling or counting, it is institutionally independent of the OSCE, and it does not substitute for an OSCE observation mission. Its scope covers the legal and institutional framework, redistricting, voter registration and participation, election administration, campaign finance, and the media and digital information environment.
Washington's positions are on the record on both sides. The State Department's stated reason, as documented in fact-checking of the decision, was that the OSCE should focus its limited resources on elections where it can have the greatest impact. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned the move on October 6 as unprecedented in more than two decades and antithetical to the transparency that defines American elections. What changes on the ground in Texas is nothing procedural: Harris County's vote centers, observers and party poll watchers operate under Texas law as they always have. What changes is the outside witness - for the first time in 24 years, the report the world reads about a U.S. election will not come from the body that has written it since 2002.
