Trump rejects international election monitors, breaking 2-decade tradition

President Trump is breaking a more than two-decade-long tradition of welcoming a key group of international election observers to monitor the midterm contest, drawing criticism for discouraging democratic transparency. 

The U.S. has routinely invited election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to observe and report on midterm and presidential contests since 2002. Election observations are carried out by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

Trump’s decision puts the U.S. in the same basket as the isolated, autocratic regimes of Belarus and Russia. Those countries have also rejected international observers, and their most recent elections were widely condemned as a sham.  

The U.S. is one of the 57 members of the OSCE, an international body created after the Cold War to promote democracy and human rights in post-Soviet states. The U.S. hosting OSCE election observers is viewed as an important signal of transparency that encourages countries with more vulnerable democracies to open up their elections to observation and monitoring. 

“The Trump Administration’s decision not to invite international observers to the United States is deeply antithetical to the spirit of freedom, democracy and transparency that defines our elections,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the outgoing ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. 

“I urge the Trump Administration to respect the role of independent election observers and ensure that the United States holds itself to the same standards that we would expect of any other democracy.”

Shaheen is also a member of the Helsinki Commission, an independent organization led by members of Congress and housed on Capitol Hill that monitors OSCE compliance in member states. 

The election-monitoring mission of the OSCE’s human rights office, the ODIHR, does not have........

© The Hill