International election monitoring group OSCE has observed every U.S. election since 2002. The Trump administration is excluding them from the midterms

For more than twenty years, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has sent observers to every federal election in the United States. That run began in 2002. It will not continue for the midterms. The Trump administration declined to invite the group, so its monitors will not be at a U.S. election for the first time in more than two decades.

According to MS NOW, those monitors usually visit a selection of polling stations and later publish a report on how the vote was carried out, along with other work tied to the election. They do not step in while voting is underway, and they have no power to enforce rules. Each state decides whether the observers may enter its polling places.

The gap arrives as Democrats and election integrity experts have voiced concern about possible election meddling. Those concerns followed a Department of Justice announcement that it plans to send its own monitors. With this decision, Washington joins only Russia and Belarus in keeping OSCE observers out.

Prior invitations covered the 2018 midterms and the 2024 presidential election

The exclusion is a change from recent practice. OSCE observers were invited to the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first term. Election security remains a focus this cycle, as the Pentagon is sending military cyber resources to help protect the midterms after a major federal election security change.

They also monitored the 2024 elections. Looking back at that race, the organization called the elections “well-run” and said candidates campaigned “freely across the country.” The OSCE has treated the latest decision as a break from standing commitments.

In a statement, it said the Trump administration’s move “is not in line” with what the United States has already agreed to with other countries in the organization. Participating states have pledged to invite observers to their elections. The OSCE described the U.S. choice as “regrettable.”

Human Rights Watch weighed in as well. The group said the move “fuels fears of serious human rights concerns around the upcoming elections.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat who is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised a separate objection in comments to MS NOW. She said the administration’s decision “risks undermining public trust in America’s safe and secure election system.”

Shaheen also said, “The Trump administration’s decision not to invite international observers to the United States is deeply antithetical to the spirit of freedom, democracy and transparency that defines our elections.” She added that the United States should hold “itself to the same standards that we would expect of any other democracy.”

A State Department spokesperson was asked why observers were not invited this year. The spokesperson said the OSCE “should focus its limited resources on elections where it can have the greatest impact.”

Dan Baer, who served as U.S. ambassador to the OSCE during the Obama administration, framed the refusal differently. “Refusing election observers is usually something that countries in a position of weakness do, when they know that they have corrupt or unfair elections,” he said. Baer continued, “It’s very strange for the United States, which has been historically a standard setter in free and fair elections, to refuse observers.”