Observers from Europe Evaluate US Election

[Postmaster]

BOOK INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS TICKETS LOCAL FLIGHTS HOTELS BOOKINGS WORLDWIDE AND MORE AT CHEAPEST RATE EVER! CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR FLIGHT AND RECEIVE YOUR FLIGHT TICKET INSTANTLY

Ursula Gacek, head of the election observer mission to the United States from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cheerfully refers to November 3, the U.S. presidential election, as “E-day.”   
 
Gacek spoke to VOA by phone after the release last week of a report by the elections arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on the conditions leading up to election day.   
 
She says 2020 is different than the previous nine elections that OSCE has observed. The United States, a member of the OSCE, invited the European observers after the 2000 presidential election, when the decision about who had won the presidential race went all the way to the Supreme Court before it was decided for George W. Bush over former vice president Al Gore. At the invitation of the U.S. government, OSCE has sent observation teams for every U.S. presidential and midterm election since then.   
 
There’s more than one reason that this year is different. The most obvious, Gacek said, is the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights to vastly scale down the number of observers sent to the U.S. Pre-pandemic, the office had planned to send 500. But after the pandemic hit, they scaled back to just 30.