Vafa Fati-Zada and Gunther Guggenberger were in Peoria for a week or so in October after spending some time in Springfield.
Fati-Zada, from Azerbaijan, and Guggenberger,
from Austria, were then on their way to Chicago, then planned to continue north to Wisconsin.
The pair was doing research on the Midterm Elections here and how media covers all the races for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The two pounded the pavement to seek out election officials and the various news outlets the city has in a very unconventional local media environment.
The OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions
and Human Rights has 20 teams and 17 experts in the United States this election season to observe the leadup and see what happens on Nov. 8.
Most teams visit two states. Fati-Zada and Guggenberger were heading up to Madison, Wis., for their first stop in Cheese Land in mid-October.
The group’s mission is to “provides support, assistance and expertise to participating States and civil society to promote democracy, rule of law, human rights and tolerance and non-discrimination.”
“Most of the observers are paid by their home government and OSCE,” said Fati-Zada, who was to be in the States with her comrade for six weeks. “We worked with two American ladies in Albania.”
The organization, which started as the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, is 50-some years old and has been sending these teams to the U.S. since 2018. All those visits no doubt helped with setting up and preserving Democracy around the world. See what works in America, see how the Americans do it, and apply to help struggling nations (and the developed ones!) with the Grand Experiment.
But how much of that changed on Jan. 6, 2021? The shoe might now be on the other foot. When American citizens stormed the U.S. Capitol, the attempted insurrection added a component to future OSCE missions. Not only will the likes of Fati-Zada and Guggenberger be observing and making recommendations to the OSCE’s 57 member nations around the planet, they may have some serious things to say to us.
A news release issued in September stated the OSCE’s “mission will assess the elections for their compliance with OSCE commitments and other international obligations and standards for democratic elections.”
Wonder if we will comply.
On the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights webpage at osce.org there’s a scroll with news releases about election teams being deployed to Kazakhstan, signing memorandums of understanding with the aforementioned Albania, recommendations for Serbia, reports on elections from Bosnia and Bulgaria. The OSCE, which is based in Warsaw, has had its hands full with COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, of course.
Fast forward to Fall, 2022. What would be unfathomable just two years ago — that the United States of America would not have peaceful transitions of power after the dust settled from its elections — is now a very real possibility.
More than half of the Republican candidates for U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and key statewide races “have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election,” according to the Washington Post.
Several states have election deniers who will be in charge of certifying elections. Some GOP-controlled legislatures seem to be passing laws that take away the power of the vote from the voters and are transferring it to the existing governments.
Will we be that exceptional, bastion of Democracy the world expects us to be? Will the beacon on the hill of this great nation still shine?
The world is watching.
— Brian Ludwig is Managing Editor
of The Community Word