Last week’s U.S. election is getting high praise from international observers who were invited to watch and assess the process.
A preliminary report released Tuesday by a 28-member delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS) said the group saw no “serious irregularities” at polling stations or vote-counting centers.
The report criticized President Trump for claiming Democrats tried to rig the election in Joe Biden’s favor.
The OAS team “praised state and local officials for efforts to facilitate voting during the coronavirus pandemic and … found no evidence of the pervasive fraud” that Trump insists cost him the election, says the Wall Street Journal.
The 20-page OAS report is in line with that of another observation team representing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose leader dismissed Trump’s claims voter fraud as “baseless allegations.”
The OAS group, representing 13 countries, was invited by the State Department to scrutinize the election. It observed both voters and vote-counters in battleground states Georgia and Michigan, as well as Iowa, Maryland and Washington D.C.
“The OAS routinely sends missions to report independently on elections in member states [including the U.S.],” the Journal says, adding that “this year alone, its observers have filed reports from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Peru and Suriname.”
The OAS experts “witnessed no instances of voter fraud or irregularities and said Election Day was mostly peaceful, despite some efforts to intimidate poll workers as the votes were being counted,” reports Business Insider.
In an apparent jab at Trump, the OAS report said it is “critical … that candidates act responsibly in presenting and arguing legitimate claims before the courts, not unsubstantiated or harmful speculation in the public media.”
