U.S. vote was peaceful, but Trump’s fraud claims hurt trust, international observers say

WASHINGTON - As a long line of voters snaked through the polling station at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on Tuesday, two election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) stood by, watching.

Americans who vote are well aware of poll monitors: volunteers, friends and neighbors who turn up on Election Day to keep tabs on the machinery of democracy.

But they tend to be less aware of another type of observer: international election monitors. The experts from around the world, invited by the State Department under terms of international agreements, monitor elections in dozens of countries, including the United States, and raise whatever problems or concerns they find, in what has emerged as a mutual best practice among democracies.

Tuesday’s presidential election - which former president Donald Trump won, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris - “demonstrated the resilience of the country’s democratic institutions,” followed “a well-run process” and proceeded in a generally “peaceful and orderly atmosphere,” the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) said in findings released Wednesday afternoon. But the vote “was marked by disinformation and instances of violence, including harsh and intolerant language against women and immigrants by one candidate,” the delegation warned, while “claims by Mr. Trump of widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 elections, dismissed by state and federal courts, have eroded public trust in democratic processes.”

Trump made repeated, unfounded claims meant to undermine the election’s legitimacy in the run-up to this year’s vote, setting the groundwork for possible election challenges, The Washington Post reported.

The observers found that the vote was “well managed.” In addition to particular concerns about this year’s “highly polarized environment” and challenges to democratic norms on the part of Trump, they raised structural issues that they have pointed to previously: election spending that confers advantages to the well funded, disenfranchisement of convicts and fraught debates over voter identification, among others.

“We’re not just here to observe Election Day,” Tamás Meszerics, head of the election observation mission from the ODIHR, explained outside the library on Tuesday. He was part of a 64-person contingent that had fanned out across the Lower 48. They were in their element.

Most of the team, part of the 11th such mission to monitor a U.S. presidential vote, arrived more than a month ago to observe weeks of voter registration and early voting, and to brush up on the particularities of each state’s election laws. Some attended political rallies to gain a sense of how voters are feeling before the election and met with state and federal election officials.

On Tuesday, their work was reaching its climax as Americans streamed into polling places to cast their votes. Meszerics declined to provide any snap assessment of what was unfolding in front of him. Observers are trained to stifle any expectations to avoid confirmation bias, he said.

“We’re not here to look at who wins; we’re here to look at how they win,” said ODIHR spokeswoman Katya Andrusz.

Nearly 60 countries are part of the organization, which sends observers around the world. Member states are expected to allow the group to observe their own elections, too, which is why the United States routinely welcomes the monitors.

Some states, including Tennessee, forbid foreign observers, while others including California, Missouri, Nebraska and New Mexico have specific state laws welcoming them.

The group’s interim report outlining the U.S. voting landscape heading up to Election Day, released in late October, encapsulated the same concerns expressed by many voters across the country - an environment that could combust into political violence. But many of those fears centered on what would happen if Trump lost, an eventuality that did not come to pass.

The post-election findings cited instances of violence, including assassination attempts against Trump, but none that undermined the credibility of the vote. Disruptions - such as ballot drop boxes set on fire in Oregon and Washington state and a poll worker punched in the face in San Antonio - were “isolated and episodic,” rather than big coordinated attacks, David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, told reporters.

The OSCE seemed most concerned about structural factors that it raised before, including large variations among states in how elections are conducted and lack of clarity around the electoral college. These concerns remain unaddressed, the observers found. Neither the State Department nor the Trump and Harris campaigns responded immediately to requests for comment on the findings.

“No democracy is perfect, and no election is perfect either,” Andrusz said. “They can always be improved, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re here.”