For the first time in two decades, international observers are not invited to this year’s pivotal election

We hope that the Deerfield Valley voters who attended this week’s meeting on voting rights with three local town clerks came away with a better understanding of Vermont election laws and practices, and we hope they feel assured that Vermont election officials take election integrity and security seriously. Everyone at the meeting deserves kudos – the organizers, the town clerks, and all those who attended.ACFor readers who are keeping track of the many challenges to election norms in the United States this year, one has flown under the radar at most media organizations. For more than 20 years, the US State Department has invited election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE-ODIHR) to observe federal elections in the United States. This year, however, there was been no such invitation from the United States to OSCE-ODIHR.
That means that, for the first time in over two decades – since the troubled election of 2000 – there may be no independent third-party professional observation of a US national election.
What is the OSCE?
To put it simply, the OSCE is a multinational organization that works to promote stability, peace, arms control, human rights, and fair elections across its membership in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Through ODIHR, OSCE’s “human dimension” arm, the organization observes the elections of its member nations around the globe – from the United States (a founding member) to Mongolia (the organization’s newest member). As the name suggests, the OSCE was initially created with a focus on Europe – Eastern Europe, to be specific – during the Cold War era. Since the end of the Cold War, the multinational organization has expanded both its membership and ODIHR’s election observation mandate.
Although one of the chief aims of the post-Cold War election-observation mandate was to assist the developing democracies of the former Soviet sphere of influence in fine tuning their election laws and procedures through recommendations based on mutually agreed-upon criteria, the organization also observes elections in long-standing democracies like the United States. Not only can 250-year-old democracies provide solid examples to newer members, they can also continue to improve their democratic processes.
ODIHR’s independent, nonpartisan, third-party election observation and its statistics-based voting analysis is considered the global gold standard of technical, unbiased election observation.
What do election observers do?
Each ODIHR observation mission starts with a needs assessment, through which ODIHR determines the level of observation activity necessary to provide an analysis. An observation mission can range from a few people monitoring election activity from a nation’s capital to a full mission with hundreds of long- and short-term observers, working in teams of two, fanned out across a country. Generally, ODIHR recommends a “limited” observation mission for US elections, which means the deployment of between 50 to 70 observers.
The first observers to arrive are the “core team,” a group of about 10 to 20 people who will coordinate the observation mission from a central location – usually the nation’s capitol. To maintain impartiality, all members of an observation mission, except for local staff, are foreign nationals. No ODIHR observer is selected to observe in their own country.
Long-term regional observers are generally deployed about a month to six weeks before Election Day. They are deployed in pairs, with each member of the team coming from a different country. Their work includes interviewing the local stakeholders in the election, including election and other civil government officials, police and security officials, party leaders, candidates, representatives of national minorities, unions, media, individual voters, and organizations representing groups of voters.
These long-term observers attend political rallies, training sessions for polling station staff and central election officials, and voter informational sessions, and they observe election security preparations. The idea is for them to gain a broad understanding of the current issues and climate surrounding each election. Their observations become part of a weekly report sent to the core team.
The organization often deploys short-term observers as well to focus on specific voting activities around Election Day. Their observation is generally limited to preparations at polling stations, voting procedures at polling stations, and tabulation of the vote at the local and regional level. They may also observe other activities like voting for home-bound voters, voting by prisoners, and any post-election remedial reconciliation of data.
The short-term observers gather and submit the data used to provide ODIHR’s statistical analysis of the election. Throughout their observations, they fill out and electronically submit observation forms to analysts with the core team. With the data submitted, analysts can determine whether things like a lack of disability access to polling stations is isolated or widespread, whether polling station staff are well-trained across the region or country, and, crucially, whether any errors or irregularities in voting are isolated or widespread.
The last time ODIHR deployed a full observation mission, including 400 short-term observers, to the US was for the 2016 presidential election.
OSCE-ODIHR observers are not, however, the “election police” by any means. No observer is permitted to interfere in any aspect of an election. Observers are strictly prohibited from offering any election-related or technical advice or opinions to any of their contacts, intervening in any election activity or taking corrective actions. They can only observe and report their findings to the core team. Likewise, the overall aim of the observation mission is not to determine whether an election passes or fails — it determines the extent to which an election meets OSCE’s core democratic principles, to which all member nations, including the US, have agreed.
The end result is a final report that generally includes recommendations for changes or improvements to election law and procedures. The recommendations are just that – no government can be compelled to implement the suggested reforms. The report may also detail areas of concern, such as the general climate at polling stations, media bias, ethnic tensions or disparities, barriers to voting or widespread security issues. But while the report may not be an enforcement tool or an election “report card,” it does provide a sober, unbiased, third-party view of whether an election substantially meets core democratic principles and aspirations respected around the world for the last half century.
We must ask: Why, after 51 years of participation as an OSCE founder — and 20 years of US election observation — has the current administration declined to extend the customary invitation to observers to bear witness to this year’s midterm elections?
Deerfield Valley News Editor Mike Eldred has worked as an OSCE-ODIHR observer in several Eastern European countries.