What the OSCE Decision Doesn’t Tell You About Election Observation in the US
November 2, 2026
The fact that President Trump refused to invite international election observers (https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2026/1022/us-election-security-international-observers) to the United States for the 2026 midterms recently made news, even though they have been observing US elections since 2000 and his first administration invited them to observe the 2018 midterms and the 2020 general elections. Given his other attacks on electoral processes, international observers could have done little to stop him anyway. Still, their exclusion matters, as I explain below, and there are other, less-known facts that matter even more:
1) The United States has no systematic, nationwide practice of neutral, nonpartisan election observation, which is a much bigger problem for its democracy both in general and in case of post-electoral violence of the kind experienced on January 6, 2021. Observation in the US is conducted primarily by poll watchers or partisan observers who, unlike neutral observers, are more concerned with their party or candidate’s interest than the neutrality or integrity of the electoral process, even if the two sometimes overlap. Nonpartisan citizen observers are technically permitted in at least 35 states and the District of Columbia, and international observers in at least 33, but access is a patchwork that depends on state law and local discretion: several states make no provision for them at all, and where they are allowed, their role is often limited or ad hoc.
2) While international observation makes for interesting reading and often solid electoral analysis, it rarely makes a decisive difference when it comes to violence prevention or other practical matters. What does make a difference, however (internationally at least), are domestic election observers (who are often perceived as more biased than international observers by virtue of being from a given country) and independent Election Management Bodies (EMBs), which can serve as a neutral force/arbiter in case of trouble but which do not exist in the US (where various government institutions and party members administer elections; the US has election management bodies in the technical sense, but they are decentralized and frequently partisan rather than independent).
3) OSCE international observers (as well as those from Organization of American States when it comes to multilateral institutions) have indeed observed past US elections, but with extremely limited access to polling stations, especially in the swing states such as Ohio or Florida where their presence could actually matter.
4) Worse things have happened to OSCE observers than not being invited, such as when they were threatened with arrest in 2012 by Republican attorney generals in Texas and Iowa if they attempted to enter polling stations there. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/24/texas-attorney-general-arrest-election-monitors)
5) My friends and colleagues in countries where USAID and the United Nations (and to a lesser degree other bilateral donors) implemented electoral support programs should take pride in their elections being far more democratic by allowing nonpartisan observers, both domestic and international, and having neutral bodies, or bodies at least partially independent of the government, in charge of administering elections. In fact, this is the case with several younger democracies where electoral institutions were built or supported by international donors and organizations precisely because other state institutions on which older democracies rely are too young, too ineffective, or simply not trusted. What is really bad about the OSCE being disallowed in the US is that we send fellow Americans to observe elections around the world under the rules and principles that the US blatantly disregards, and we do this despite the commitment all OSCE participating States made in the 1990 Copenhagen Document to invite observers from other participating States to their elections. After the 2012 arrest threats, the OSCE noted that as a participating State, the United States had an obligation to invite international observers, but that was then. These days, the United States belongs firmly in the company of countries such as Belarus and Russia, which have shut out OSCE observers.
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