By refusing to recognize the results of the elections in Belarus, the United States is questioning its own voting, which is already accompanied by a mass of scandals.
According to The Guardian, hiding behind the coronavirus pandemic, the US State Department is in no hurry to send out invitations and is reducing the presence of observers in the November presidential elections. Even the OSCE was forced to limit itself to thirty representatives, although initially it planned to send five hundred people to the other side of the Atlantic.
A modest European delegation will arrive in the United States this week, assessing only the general situation in the country against the background of elections, which may become the most controversial in the history of the United States.
“The security problems, as well as the persisting travel restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, pose problems for all our electoral activities and, in particular, for the deployment of long-term and short-term observers sent directly by the OSCE countries,” the press service commented on the situation OSCE / ODIHR.
The Organization of American States never received an invitation from the United States. The State Department declined to answer journalists’ questions about whether OAS observers would be invited.
Against this background, both American parties continue to discredit the elections. Donald Trump’s supporters, like the president himself, have repeatedly warned of the threat of election fraud. This is facilitated by remote voting, which will be held at the initiative of the Democrats in the United States due to the coronavirus. The Democratic Party is not lagging behind, whipping up the tide with warnings that Trump will refuse to leave office if Joe Biden wins. In this way, parties are laying the groundwork for future maneuvers to get around the vote.
“If the results are close to each other, we may well see a protracted post-election battle in the courts and on the streets,” said Richard Hasen, professor of law at UCLA.
At the same time, the parties constantly talk about external interference, moreover, if the Democrats blame Russia, Trump and the Republicans – on China. The same logic works here: if Joe Biden loses, the Democrats will say that Moscow is to blame; if Trump loses, he will claim that Beijing contributed to his defeat. Thus, it will be more beneficial for the losing side to not recognize the results of the vote, says Elizabeth Brow, an analyst at the Royal Joint Institute for Defense Research.
“Whatever the outcome in November, there is reason to believe that supporters of the losing side may believe that foreign powers sabotaged the vote and will insist on the invalidity of the results. In this sense, it doesn’t matter whether China, Russia or any other country succeeds in influencing the voting results. What matters is what the voters believe, ” she said.
From this point of view, the presence of foreign observers becomes a problem for both Trump and Biden. Given how unclear the prospects for voting are, they both need to be able to demand non-recognition of the election results.
“What seems obvious to many other countries is that international observers can be a clear outsider who is more interested in democracy than who will win and have experience with the quality of the electoral process,” explains Susan Hyde, professor of political science at the University of California.
However, the American elites preferred to solve their problems on their own, hypocritically ignoring the international order that they themselves created. In the long term, this may even weaken the position of the United States on the world stage, when Washington tries to intervene once again in the internal affairs of another state.