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No Systemic Problems With US Election Day Proceedings, Foreign Observers Say

Marissa Melton

   WASHINGTON - Despite the pandemic, the lawsuits and the acrimonious
   political rhetoric, foreign election observers had good news. They did
   not find systemic irregularity or wrongdoing by either major party.
   Ursula Gacek, who headed a foreign team of observers that arrived in
   the U.S. in late September to study the conditions leading up to
   election day, noted there were isolated cases of irregular behavior --
   what she called "small incidents -- personal, human incidents," a
   couple of which were described in detail in footnotes to the report.
   "But nothing," she said, "that would impact and really fundamentally
   shake the confidence in the system."

   The outcome of the November 3 U.S. presidential election was still up
   for grabs Wednesday, when the Organization for Security and Cooperation
   in Europe election-monitoring team held its day-after news conference
   in Washington, D.C.
   Michael Georg Link, head of the short-term observer mission from the
   group's parliamentary assembly, praised the U.S. government, which
   invited the observer missions, for having "the strength to show that
   nobody is perfect."
   He added, "Every democracy . . . profits on exchanges of best practice
   that can help further improve and refine its electoral system where
   needed."
   The United States was obligated to invite the OSCE to observe its
   elections. Despite the Eurocentric name, both the United States and
   Canada, and a handful of Central Asian nations, are participating
   states in the OSCE, which was formed during the Cold War. OSCE
   membership comes with the obligation to invite election monitors from
   the other OSCE states as a means of holding all members to the same
   standards of transparency.
   While Link's team was in the United States to observe Election Day
   itself, Gacek's team that arrived in the U.S. in late September and a
   number of them will stay on for the next 10 days or so -- longer if the
   vote count is protracted.
   A report issued Wednesday by both groups noted that an expansion of
   early voting and mail-in voting meant to make voting safer during the
   coronavirus pandemic led to more than 400 lawsuits filed in 44
   different states, some of which continued even as the voting took
   place. That, Gacek said, had the effect of "changing the rules of the
   game whilst the game was already on."

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