OAS Deploys Election Observers to Monitor US Presidential Vote

By teleSUR

05 November 16

The team of observers arrives Saturday to begin the first ever OAS monitoring of a U.S. presidential election.

he Organization of American States has sent a team of 41 observers from 18 different countries to monitor Tuesday's vote as the Republican Candidate, Donald Trump, continues raise fears of a “rigged” election.

The arrival of the OAS observers on Saturday comes a day after a federal judge in Ohio issued a temporary restraining order on Friday against the Trump campaign and adviser Roger Stone, barring them from harassing or intimidating Ohio voters during Election Day.

Fears of election-related violence have gained steam as Trump has encouraged his followers- which include many armed paramilitary groups- to “watch the polls.” Indeed some of these paramilitary groups have vowed to “march on Washington” if Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, wins.

Chris Hill, a founder of the Three Percent Security Force militia, said his group is training harder than ever. Hill told Reuters, “We're building up for this, just like the Marines ... in the event that this is the day that we hoped would never come."

OAS Delegation head, former Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla, told the Miami Herald that it would be difficult to rig an election in the United States “because the country has a hyper-diversified electoral system, in which each state counts its own votes, and there are no unified databases that could facilitate a nationwide conspiracy.”

However, many critics of the U.S. election system have suggested that the vote is indeed rigged against Black and Latino voters who have been targeted by a “perfect storm” of voter suppression laws passed by Republican state legislatures in Texas and North Carolina, among others states.

OAS observer missions themselves have a long and sordid history throughout Latin America.

While some governments have requested OAS observer missions to generate domestic and foreign confidence in the electoral process and to help prevent post-election violence, others have been highly critical of OAS interference in their sovereign affairs. Most recently the OAS has been criticized for its highly politicized attacks on the Maduro government in Venezuela and its total silence on the parliamentary coup in Brazil.