Mail voting is expected to increase in many states this year, and the electorate will see it as a safer option to vote face-to-face for the pandemic. -on ballots it can lead to a rigged election, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud involving mail voting in the United States.
The OSCE project was originally expected to involve a hundred long-term observers and 400 short-term observers in the United States as of this month, however, disorders and fitness restrictions led the Vienna-based organization to reduce that number to 30, spokeswoman Katya Andrusz said. . The Associated Press.
Suddenly, what will be the largest electoral monitoring effort in the United States in Europe has become one of the smallest: the OSCE sent 49 observers for the middle of the 2018 period and about 400 for the 2016 presidential election.
“While we plan to send a full-rule election mission, security fears and continued travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are creating challenges,” Andrusz said in an email. All 30 are expected to travel to the United States early next month. and will remain until November 3, he said, adding that none of the observers were from Russia.
Last March, the US project to the OSCE requested observers, as all countries in the group, adding Russia, are required to do so. The organization’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has deployed observers for voting in the United States since the mid-term elections in 2002, the first since the 2000 presidential recount that left the final results for weeks, ingring questions among U. S. allies about the integrity of their country. electoral policies.
The organization usually sends a small delegation months before an election to conduct a “needs assessment,” but it was conducted remotely in early June “due to the global fitness emergency and restrictions on cross-border travel,” the authorities said.
The European security organization has also publicly criticized the electoral school formula in the United States, saying it “provides an equivalent vote” as a popular vote would.
Although observers have been allowed, many US states have been allowed to do so. But it’s not the first time They do not allow them and others leave this at the discretion of local election officials. Only California, Missouri, New Mexico and Washington, D. C. , in particular, allow foreign monitors.
Calls for closer scrutiny of the November elections have multiplied, and only with national observers, as the Carter Center intends to do.
“America prides itself on being the democratic style that nations around the world deserve to emulate. But if America needs to be an example of democracy, then it deserves its choices to be, in fact, lax and fair, and let the world look,” the Boston Globe said in a publishing house last month.
In a July report expressing fear of the US vote, the OSCE said that the 400 short-term observers would come with some who would focus only on media policy in the days and hours leading up to the vote. On Friday, it was unclear whether the Lean “limited mission” would come with a media watch detail.
“In an environment of greater polarization and accusations on all sides of the policy about possible electoral fraud and mistrust in electoral procedures and outcomes, the presence of external observers to compare the procedure will be invaluable, adding a layer of transparency,” I said. I.
Timothy Rich, a professor of political science at Western Kentucky University, says “ensuring fair elections is a component of American democracy. “
“International observers have shown that they can offer an effective way to reduce public considerations about voter fraud and suppression,” Rich wrote in a recent comment for The Conversation.
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Ap’s early voting consultant presents the facts about early voting, by mail, or in the absence of the state: https://interactives. ap. org/advance-voting-2020/
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