LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Dozens of international election observers have arrived in the U.S. Lately, they've been focusing on election challenges in nations with long democratic traditions, like this country. Tamas Meszerics heads a delegation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and he spoke with our co-host Steve Inskeep.
TAMAS MESZERICS: First of all, they can talk to election officers. They also will be contacting many other interlocutors, including civil society organizations, but stakeholders as well. We are not just observing the presidential election. We are also observing congressional elections. So all federal-level elections are within the mandate.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK. So you might talk to candidates for Congress.
MESZERICS: Yes, or at least the staff of the candidates. And, of course, they are - as much as it is possible, they will try to observe directly the process itself. In some states, it's not possible to observe polling stations for international observers. Obviously, the long-term observers, they are supposed to be - and they will be - impartial and not intervening in the process at all.
INSKEEP: Not electioneering, of course.
MESZERICS: Yeah.
INSKEEP: So they might - to the extent that the laws allow in a locality, spot-checking. They might...
MESZERICS: Yes.
INSKEEP: ...Be spot-checking a particular...
MESZERICS: Yes. That's right.
INSKEEP: ...Polling place, just watching all day to see what happens there.
MESZERICS: Yes.
INSKEEP: And if there are allegations of fraud - and we can reasonably expect there will be because people are already filing lawsuits and making the preparations for that, particularly on the Republican side - how do they assess that?
MESZERICS: Well, when it comes to reporting, we report as fact only those pieces of information which we could verify by our observers. Third-party information will come in as identifying the party who submitted that information, and we might make assessment of its credibility.
INSKEEP: So there's a hot conspiracy theory on the internet. You might check it out, or you might disregard it, depending.
MESZERICS: Yeah. That's right.
INSKEEP: How are you feeling about your prospects for getting the job done in the next month?
MESZERICS: Oh, we follow a very developed and tested methodology. We know how to do it, and we do roughly the same thing in every country. Of course, there are differences among countries. The main complication is that there are about 8,000 jurisdictions who have some impact on (laughter)...
INSKEEP: Oh.
MESZERICS: ...On the election process.
INSKEEP: Because there's so many localities...
MESZERICS: Yes. That's right.
INSKEEP: ...Whereas in some other country, it might be federally or nationally run.
MESZERICS: Yeah, or fully central.
INSKEEP: I'm curious if you find that to be a strength or a weakness of the United States.
MESZERICS: It does not make our task easier, but I think it is a strength to quite a considerable degree. In some sense, it makes it very unlikely that - well, how shall I put it to be as encompassing as possible? So...
INSKEEP: You're trying to be polite. I think you're saying it makes it harder for one central authority to scam the game, to cheat, to...
MESZERICS: That's pretty much it.
INSKEEP: ...Bend the results.
MESZERICS: That's pretty much it. So there's no single easy way to manipulate these elections with such decentralized authority structure over the elections.
INSKEEP: I know that your observers have been here before. Previous reports have contained a number of recommendations about U.S. elections. Would you like to share a few of those with me? As an outsider coming in, what things do you see that seem off or wrong to you?
MESZERICS: It's not a question of right or wrong. What we are assessing is on the basis of the commitments the United States made when joining the OSCE framework and also some other international commitments. And there are a few issues here. Campaign finance and regulation of campaign finance is one of the all-time outstanding issues.
INSKEEP: Meaning that our money is distorted by politics.
MESZERICS: The other is the transparency (inaudible) politics.
INSKEEP: Ah, understanding who's paying for what.
MESZERICS: Yes.
INSKEEP: OK.
MESZERICS: The access to polling stations may be an issue. Again, we need to observe that for some marginalized groups.
INSKEEP: Oh, this is a common allegation - plenty of polling places in one area of the city and very few in another area of the city.
MESZERICS: And, of course, the United States has a very unique media situation, not whether (ph) it's possible or not.
INSKEEP: You're talking about misinformation, disinformation.
MESZERICS: Misinformation, disinformation, the general tone of the campaign, even. This is, again, a tough one because we do not have absolutely stable international standards over it, but we still might want to make recommendations of how to improve that part.
INSKEEP: Tamas Meszerics is the head of the mission to observe this year's presidential election of the United States. Thanks so much.
MESZERICS: Thank you very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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