The New Fight Over Election Observation

As a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the U.S. has signed the foundational agreement committing all participating states to open elections to external scrutiny and inviting fellow members to observe through the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The 2024 ODIHR observation mission to the U.S. found the fundamentals reassuring—a well-run process, active engagement, free campaigning—but issued 31 recommendations to align U.S. elections with international standards and commitments. Four stand out: federal pre-clearance legislation against discriminatory election-law changes; reassessing the Electoral College; balanced representation in election administration; and guaranteed access for international and nonpartisan observers—notable, since 17 states still legally bar international observation, which is at odds with commitments made by all 57 OSCE states. Yet over a year later, follow-through is thin: no pre-clearance restoration, no Electoral College review, unchanged observer-access laws. Where movement exists—in disinformation tools, in financial disclosure—it remains piecemeal.

An uncomfortable convergence

As part of its methodology, ODIHR typically deploys a Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) months in advance, followed by a report and, depending on the findings, an observation mission. This was the sequence before 2024's vote, but as of this writing, ODIHR's public calendar lists the November 3, 2026, U.S. midterms as upcoming, with no needs assessment or any other recorded activity. The pre-election assessment should already have happened. This isn't proof Washington declined to invite ODIHR—but it breaks with recent cycles, arriving as the administration steps back from other multilateral engagement.

The OSCE's founding agreement is reciprocal: every state invites others to observe its elections. A cluster of authoritarian and backsliding states has quietly abandoned that accord. Russia blocked ODIHR from its 2021 State Duma elections and issued no invitation for the 2024 elections. Belarus hasn't invited ODIHR since 2020. Tajikistan's 2025 mission was canceled due to accreditation delays. Georgia invited ODIHR less than a month before its 2025 local elections—which ODIHR said was incompatible with credible observation. None formally renounced their commitments; they simply made the invitation late, conditional, or absent. The U.S. pattern for 2026 sits uncomfortably close to that category: no rejection on record, just an absence where an invitation should be. Perhaps the writing was on the wall all along, since in 2024 several state election officials refused to meet with ODIHR observers due to perceived concerns about foreign interference.

Diverging tactics abroad

Disengaging from scrutiny at home doesn't predict behavior abroad, where Russia and the U.S. diverge sharply in method—even as the underlying instinct to influence outcomes rather than submit to independent assessment looks similar.

Russia has built a parallel institution. In April 2026, under the patronage of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow hosted a conference that drew over 150 delegates from 60-plus countries, formally establishing the International Association for Political and Electoral Expertise (IAPEE), which is backed by Russia's Presidential Administration, the Foreign Ministry, and the Central Election Commission. Its governing board includes figures with documented histories in the occupied Ukrainian territory and Belarus's 2020 election. IAPEE mimics the form of observation—recruitment, deployment, published findings—while replacing oversight with reciprocal validation, in which governments endorse each other's elections. Lavrov cast it as an "immune response by the global majority" against Western "electoral neocolonialism". Russia has already invited IAPEE to observe its own September 2026 State Duma vote—a model built for export across the Global South.

The United States has hollowed out its own infrastructure, then filled the gap with partisan actors. Rather than building a rival institution, the Trump administration cut funding to organizations that long conducted standards-based assessments abroad—the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center among them—as part of a broader dismantling of USAID's democracy programming.

That withdrawal hasn't meant disengagement—just a different kind of engagement, as diplomats, appointees, and members of Congress move into the space once occupied by professional missions. The House Intelligence Committee led a bipartisan election observation mission to Honduras in November 2025. Republican Senator Bernie Moreno observed Colombia's 2026 election while making his preferences for a winning side known, prompting claims of interference. The U.S. Embassy in Peru deployed its own observers nationwide during the tense 2026 runoff—prompting allegations of influence from left-wing outlets. A long-term Trump ally and political nominee led a U.S. “election observation” delegation and traveled to Romania in May 2025 to monitor the presidential rerun.

These deployments fall short of the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, which requires comprehensive, long-term observation across the pre-election, election-day, and post-election periods, oriented toward the process rather than any particular result, and culminating in timely, accurate, impartial public findings. Members instead offered political commentary, praised favored administrations, or lent their presence as a marker of U.S. support—grey-zone validation rather than genuine observation.

Same effect, different design

Russia and the U.S. aren't running the same playbook. Moscow builds an alternative community—a charter, training pipeline, governing council—to escape post-2022 isolation while preserving the appearance of norm-following on its own terms. Washington constructs no new institutions; it quietly disengages from the ones that exist, while funding cuts create a vacuum that diplomats, appointees, and members of Congress fill ad hoc.

The functional result converges: standards-based scrutiny is displaced by actors serving a political-influence agenda—propping up favored governments or candidates within each country's sphere of interest, while the language of observation lends unearned legitimacy. In both, a government's posture toward oversight abroad mirrors its posture at home: diminished tolerance for scrutiny domestically and grey-zone validation internationally are two expressions of the same retreat from accountability.

What would change the trajectory?

Domestically, effective steps can be taken before the 2026 midterms: issue an ODIHR invitation without delay; repeal or preempt state laws that bar international and nonpartisan observers; and address the 2024 recommendations.

Internationally, the U.S. should restore the boundary between diplomacy, partisan endorsement, and impartial observation. First, the U.S. should rebuild support for missions meeting the Declaration of Principles criteria. Second, it should bar members of Congress, appointees, and embassy staff from self-designating as "election observers" unless they have a genuine, independent mission. Finally, it should use the U.S. platform inside the OSCE to defend the Copenhagen Document against Russia's sovereignty-first alternative—while closing the gap between what Washington asks of others and what it accepts for itself.

Ancuța (Anna) Hansen is the director of Perseveras Consulting.