Experts to monitor U.S. elections for first time

WASHINGTON — For the first time ever, international elections experts from the Organization of American States will soon be arriving in the United States to monitor the final campaign sprint to the November elections.

The United Nations-like hemispheric organization will send up to 35 experts, led by former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, to the United States to monitor the electoral process, campaign financing and political inclusion, among other areas.

The decision by the Obama administration to invite the Latin American observers to monitor the presidential election is significant considering the United States’ reputation for paternalism in the hemisphere, where it has long advocated OAS monitoring for other nations, but not for itself.

“It gives the United States a lot more legitimacy when it presses countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela to have international observers,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue. “They can’t come back and say, ‘Why don’t we have them for your election?’ ”

Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Juan Gonzalez noted the OAS mission last week when explaining to members of Congress the administration’s efforts to pressure the Nicaraguan government to allow OAS monitors for its November election.

“It’s not like we’re saying, ‘Do what we say, not do what we do,’ ” Gonzalez said. “We’re actually walking the walk in this case.”

When Venezuela rejected monitoring of its parliamentary elections in December, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez compared his country’s elections to the practices of the U.S.

“There is no OAS electoral mission in the U.S.,” Alvarez said last year. “It’s not needed.”

The State Department’s deputy spokesman Mark Toner said it was important to support the OAS’s work “promoting free and fair elections throughout the region.”