“We are still in the process of looking at the situation because it is not terribly clear in some states whether it is possible to observe in polling stations on election day or not, and we are trying to clarify this before we start our deployment,” Glover stated on Tuesday.
In the US electoral system, individual states administer elections, including those for federal offices such as president and Congress. Laws in some US states prohibit international observers at polling stations, but others — Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota — allow them.
The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights will be deploying teams of monitors to report on the transparency of next month’s US elections. The office conducted a “needs assessment mission” that determined 100 long-term monitors and 400 short-term monitors would be required for the job.
Glover explained that her mission will likely have only 26 long-term observers from OSCE member countries and “probably less than 400” short-term monitors.
This will be the seventh US election the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has covered since 2002 but the first to include short-term observers.
The long-term observers will be arriving in the United States on October 9. The OSCE office will issue its first interim report on US election transparency on October 24 and is scheduled to have a news conference on November 9, the day after the election.
