We hear a lot about ‘free and fair’ elections, but who makes that call? In the past few weeks, as (even) more unusual circumstances have emerged around the 2020 election: a pandemic, the president’s COVID diagnosis, RBG’s death and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, USPS mail delays (and so many more), a major question looms: after all the November 3 ballots have been counted, likely weeks after ‘election day,’ how will we know that we can trust the results?
One existing tool to answer that question: international election observers. If you’ve heard of them, maybe as election monitors, it’s likely in the context of a far-away country, facing challenges like corruption, dictatorship, or shaky institutions. But election monitoring is something the U.S. regularly participates in, sending volunteer observers to participate in observation ‘missions’ abroad, and inviting observers here to analyze U.S. elections, too. While 2020 is, hem, different, the goal of international election observers remains the same: to provide a credible, data-driven assessment of the conduct of an election, by an organization with no stakes in the election’s political outcome. They’re a bit like referees: they observe and make a call. If trust in domestic institutions is low, and election conditions are challenging, as they are in the US right now, this kind of impartial evaluation is extra important to determine the credibility of the election process.
The good news: There will be international election monitors from the ODIHR observing the Nov. 3 general election. The United States is one of 57 participating members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). Created in 1975 as a cold-war era tool for negotiation, now among their goals is to, in their words, “observe elections to assess the extent to which electoral processes respect fundamental freedoms and are characterized by equality, universality, political pluralism, confidence, transparency and accountability.” In 1990, the U.S. committed to inviting and providing access for international observers. Since then, the OSCE has observed and produced reports on nine US elections, most recently the 2018 midterms. The U.S. also regularly sends volunteers to participate in missions as observers.
How does it usually work? Election observers with the ODIHR are volunteers who must be non-residents and non-citizens of the country where the election is taking place. During election ‘missions,’ volunteers travel to the country where the election is happening, and use criteria based on international and domestic standards for democratic elections to evaluate the election process as a whole. “Instead of just concentrating on election day events witnessed in polling stations, including violations such as ballot-box stuffing or voter intimidation,” the OSCE describes, “missions consider the pre-election environment, looking out for violations such as administrative constraints and disregard for fundamental civil and political rights.”
A typical election observation mission includes a small core team, several dozen long-term observers and hundreds of short-term observers, all adhering to its strict guidelines. After examining federal and state legal frameworks, voter registration and identification, campaign finance, media coverage of elections, and more, a public report of the analysis and findings is published.
The bad news: COVID and U.S. state election rules make observation tough this year. According to a needs assessment published July 3 2020, the OSCE intended to send 100 long term and 400 short term observers for the Nov. 3 general election in the US. Due to COVID and other concerns, however, the OSCE will instead send only 30 observers, according to reports in the Guardian. “While mission members will visit a limited number of polling stations on election day,” says the OSCE, “observers will not conduct a systematic observation of voting, counting or tabulation of results.” At a fraction of the recommended number of observers, this significantly limits the scope of monitoring, one of many barriers to a comprehensive impartial analysis of this election.
And observers faced challenges long before COVID. Like many election rules, laws about election observers are regulated at the state and local level, and according to the OSCE’s 2018 midterm report, 18 states have placed restrictions on election observers since 2016. This limits the places that observers are allowed to conduct monitoring. Observers may also face threats due to the increasingly polarized environment; many types of groups are expected to observe the 2020 election, and members of the impartial ODIHR, which operates within strict guidelines, worry that their observation could be wrongly perceived as voter intimidation. All of these barriers for election observers mean that the major impartial, internationally recognized analysis and record of the 2020 election by the ODIHR will be limited. Alongside many other destabilizing factors (at this point, truly more by the day) this could lead to more potential confusion and ambiguity about the legitimacy of the election (and from the entity that is intended to cut through that fog!)
The watchers are few, the scope is restricted, and with only 30 observers, findings won’t be comprehensive. But at least observers are here, risking their lives flying to the world’s COVID hotspot to do their best to impartially evaluate our democratic processes when that perspective is needed most. They’re planning a press conference with their findings Nov. 4, and I know I’ll be tuning in for their take.
christinezirneklis.com 