AICGS: ANALYSES : Election 2004 – In The Eyes of the Beholders - by Ms. Nicole Renvert

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has announced that a group of election observers will be sent to the United States to monitor the upcoming presidential elections in November 2004. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODHIR) - part of the OSCE institutional body in charge of election observation and election supervision - pointed out that they see problems with respect to voter registration, abuse of absentee ballots, intimidation, listing of voters, and wrongful voter purges.

Following the U.S. invitation to observe the elections in 2004, the OSCE/ODHIR will deploy an Election Observation Mission (EOM), with a core analytical team to be deployed in Washington D.C. for up to five weeks. In addition, about 100 short term and long term observers will be deployed throughout the states.

A small German delegation will be among them. This group will not be seconded by the German Foreign Office but will come directly from ODHIR and is headed by the former President of the German Bundestag – Prof. Dr. Rita Suessmuth. Dr. Suessmuth is known for her firm beliefs and outspoken positions and has solid experience in election observation. She is a former Vice -President of the German delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and headed a delegation of forty German observers during the Russian parliamentary elections in May 2003.

Even though Dr. Suessmuth is traveling to the United States as a member of a neutral multinational delegation from a multinational organization, her visit and the foreseeable critique by the observers could yet again raise more than eyebrows in the already uneasy U.S.-German relationship. She is, after all, a German citizen, and whatever she and the other delegates conclude and announce publicly will ultimately also be read as an indication of Germany’s attitude to the United States. Thus, the presidential election (Wahl) could easily become a pain (Qual) not only for the United States, but also for its transatlantic partners.

Election observation by the OSCE or the European Union is common – and not only limited to transformation countries. The fact, however, that the OSCE agreed to send observers to the United States, itself a member of the OSCE, points to an important development between 2000 and 2004:

Before the Presidential elections in 2000, the Russian delegation to the OSCE suggested to send monitors to the United States. This request was met with surprise - after all, the United States sees itself as a model democracy and has already voted for its president fifty-five times. So how can the model democracy allow “not –so –model democracies” to oversee its election?

There was also some suspicion that by proposing such a mission Russia might want to distract from its own problems and (im)proper conduct of elections.

But despite the fact that the whole issue was kept relatively quiet something must have been triggered in the minds of those responsible for election observation. While at first the Russian request was not taken too seriously by other OSCE member states, the transatlantic dissent over the Iraq war and the U.S. administration’s foreign policies changed the political discourse.

By the time the midterm elections took place in 2002, the OSCE did send a small team of observers to the United States who suggested some changes to the voting and registration system.
Also in 2002, the United States issued common procedures and standards for the election process under the Help America Vote Act. However, for thirteen U.S. Democratic Congressmen this was not enough. They appealed to Kofi Annan to send an independent observation delegation to the presidential elections in 2004. This was not met with great enthusiasm by most members of Congress, who did not want to set aside federal money to finance such a mission and generally did not like the whole idea. The establishment of an OSCE Mission in 2004 paid by the OSCE member states therefore seemed to be the best solution.

(One should keep in mind that, given the chance, over 80 percent of Europeans would vote for Kerry - but they can’t.) Sending an OSCE mission to the United States might be a way to support at the very least the proper outcome of the elections in 2004. This might prove, however, an impossible mission to accomplish.

In early September 2004, an OSCE Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) traveled to the United States and presented a detailed report to the OSCE Permanent Council: 1)

The OSCE report from September 2004 shows that the criteria laid out in the Help America Vote Act will not be met for the upcoming elections. Several amendments could not yet be implemented: There is still no central voter registry (zentrale Wählerdatenbanken) and the new touch screen computers that are supposed to replace the old lever and punch card voting machines (Vote-O-Matics), which caused so much trouble in 2001, are not as reliable as was expected.
Over 14,000 new machines had to be returned to the manufacturer already because they were not functioning properly. In addition, these machines do not provide a paper trail of votes to allow verification of the results through a manual recount.
The “Vote-O-Matics” will still be used in over half of the U.S. states. This time it is feared that “Ohio is this year’s Florida.”
Another critique in the OSCE report was the fact that the election ballots (Wahlzettel) can be sent by fax – which does not conform to the principle of a free, fair and confidential vote - and that even proper registration identification is not needed in most states.
The OSCE-NAM-observers noted that there are signs of problems with voter registration; in some cases voters are being kept from registering while in others people are registered who are already dead and therefore obviously cannot vote.

OSCE missions are rarely welcome – even if they are officially invited, and there are already concerns in the United States that the presence of the observers will be an impediment for the elections.

Given the size of the United States and the complexity of the election process, the OSCE/ODHIR mission of roughly 100 people can hardly play anything else than a symbolic role.

Also, the political weight of such a mission is limited: What if there are indeed inconsistencies – what will be the consequences – apart from visible diplomatic irritations?

True, the United States does gain some credibility by letting outside observers point to problems of the election process – or as one of the OSCE delegates recently said: “Bewährte und gereifte Demokratien empfangen ausländische Wahlbeobachter mit Freude, da sie vieles haben, worauf sie stolz sein können und nichts zu verbergen” [Proven and matured democracies gladly welcome foreign election observers since they have much to be proud of and nothing to hide.]

However, for a country often billing itself as the “cradle of democracy,” having foreign officials observe its election process means a loss of credibility because this places it on par with countries whom the United States previously observed and tutored in taking the first steps towards democracy.

The development over the past years shows that there is indeed rising concern about the United States as a model democracy. It also shows that even well-intended missions might further complicate matters between the United States and Europe or even more precisely – between Germany and the United States – or even within Germany.

It also seems that such a mission is like barking up the wrong tree – when there are indeed more serious concerns on other, truly relevant matters. Whoever will win the election will face a difficult inheritance of current international diplomatic and security challenges. With the global war on terror, a deteriorating situation in Iraq and problems in Afghanistan – to name just a few – more cooperation is needed and not more undermining of credibilty on both sides of the Atlantic.

With or without a OSCE mission to the United States – the election is not the end of a crisis but the beginning of a new episode of policy making in an increasingly disaggregating world.

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1) For further information on the OSCE Mission see: http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2004/09/3655_en.pdf

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Nicole Renvert is a currently a DAAD/AICGS Research Fellow at AICGS. She has monitored and supervised elections for the OSCE in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

This essay appeared in the October 14, 2004 AICGS Advisor.
........................................................................................................................ The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.