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      in US Politics

      Federal court rejects Trump election lawsuit in Pennsylvania

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      Donald Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat in court Friday as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results.Trump’s lawyers vowed to appeal to the supreme court despite the Philadelphia judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit”.“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the three-judge panel.The case had been argued last week in a lower court by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who insisted during five hours of oral arguments that the 2020 presidential election had been marred by widespread fraud in Pennsylvania. However, Giuliani failed to offer any tangible proof of that in court.The US district judge Matthew Brann had said the campaign’s error-filled complaint, “like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together” and denied Giuliani the right to amend it for a second time.The 3rd US circuit court of appeals called that decision justified. The three judges on the panel were all appointed by Republican presidents. including Bibas, a former University of Pennsylvania law professor appointed by Trump. Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, sat on the court for 20 years, retiring in 2019.“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,” Bibas said in the opinion, which also denied the campaign’s request to stop the state from certifying its results, a demand he called “breathtaking”.In fact, Pennsylvania officials had certified their vote count Monday for President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump by more than 80,000 votes in the state. Nationally, Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, garnered nearly 80 million votes, a record in US presidential elections.Trump has said he hopes the supreme court will intervene in the race as it did in 2000, when its decision to stop the recount in Florida gave the election to Republican George W Bush. On November 5, as the vote count continued, Trump posted a tweet saying the “US Supreme Court should decide!”Ever since, Trump and his surrogates have attacked the election as flawed and filed a flurry of lawsuits to try to block the results in six battleground states. But they’ve found little sympathy from judges, nearly all of whom dismissed their complaints about the security of mail-in ballots, which millions of people used to vote from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.Trump perhaps hopes a supreme court he helped steer toward a conservative 6-3 majority would be more open to his pleas, especially since the high court upheld Pennsylvania’s decision to accept mail-in ballots through 6 November by only a 4-4 vote last month. Since then, the Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett has joined the court.“The activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania continues to cover up the allegations of massive fraud,” Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis tweeted after Friday’s ruling. “On to SCOTUS!”In the case before Brann, the Trump campaign asked to disenfranchise the state’s 6.8 million voters, or at least the 700,000 who voted by mail in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other Democratic-leaning areas.“One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption,” Brann wrote in his scathing ruling on 21 November. “That has not happened.”A separate Republican challenge that reached the Pennsylvania supreme court this week seeks to stop the state from further certifying any races on the ballot. The Democratic governor Tom Wolf’s administration is fighting that effort, saying it would prevent the state’s legislature and congressional delegation from being seated in the coming weeks.On Thursday, Trump said the 3 November election was still far from over. Yet he offered the clearest signal to date that he would leave the White House peaceably on January 20 if the electoral college formalized Biden’s win.“Certainly I will. But you know that,” Trump said at the White House, taking questions from reporters for the first time since election day.On Friday, however, he continued to baselessly attack Detroit, Atlanta and other Democratic cities with large Black populations as the source of “massive voter fraud”. And he claimed, without evidence, that a Pennsylvania poll watcher had uncovered computer memory drives that “gave Biden 50,000 votes” apiece.All 50 states must certify their results before the electoral college meets on 14 December, and any challenge to the results must be resolved by 8 December. Biden won both the electoral college and popular vote by wide margins. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Mini desk. Tiny hands. Small soul’: Trump mocked for giving speech at little table

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      For a US president obsessed by size – his hands, his wealth, his crowds – Donald Trump made something of a bold U-turn on Thursday night by addressing the country from a desk seemingly designed for a leprechaun.
      Trump said on Thursday he would leave the White House if the electoral college votes for the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden – the closest he has come to admitting defeat – but his furniture stole the limelight.
      While he harangued reporters and repeated unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, the internet zeroed in on his unusually small desk. Some called it symbolic of Trump’s diminished stature, some wondered if it was photoshopped (it wasn’t), most just laughed.
      The actor Mark Hamill tweeted: “Maybe if you behave yourself, stop lying to undermine a fair election & start thinking of what’s good for the country instead of whining about how unfairly you are treated, you’ll be invited to sit at the big boy’s table.”
      The hashtag #DiaperDon swiftly trended on Twitter, with people mocking the president as an infant banished to the children’s table for Thanksgiving.

      Parker Molloy
      (@ParkerMolloy)
      May this be how we remember the Trump presidency: a baby at his tiny little desk throwing a tantrum pic.twitter.com/T26DjF1fL4

      November 27, 2020

      “Thought this pic was photoshopped, but nope, just hilariously symbolic! Mini desk. Tiny hands. Infinitesimally small soul,” tweeted Adam Lasnik.

      Noah Maher
      (@noahsparc)
      I still can’t quite believe this happened today.Whoever suggested that desk … thank you.#tinydesk #TinyDeskDonald https://t.co/9sQ6Ko1bMA pic.twitter.com/xKuU0DVjUD

      November 27, 2020

      Trump later sent a blizzard of tweets accusing the media of misreporting his comments and Twitter of making up “negative stuff” for its trending section. More

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      in US Politics

      What is the Republican party without Trump? Politics Weekly Extra

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      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the former labor secretary under Bill Clinton, Prof Robert Reich. They discuss whether Republicans can emerge from Trump’s shadow or whether those loyal to Trumpism will soldier on

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      What does the future hold for the Republican party? Is that small anti-Trump minority going to get larger once Trump has finally gone, or does his hold remain tight? Are we going to see a Trump campaign for 2024 dominate the next four years, or can Republicans get out from under his shadow? Robert Reich was labor secretary in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, and over the last four years he’s been one of the clearest and most effective voices in the opposition to Trump and Trumpism. He is also a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. Read Reich’s piece here Let us know what you think of the podcast: send your feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      in US Politics

      Speculation mounts over who Trump might pardon after Flynn

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      Amid widespread outcry over Donald Trump’s pardon of Michael Flynn, speculation surged about who might be next for clemency from the defeated president.
      Rick Gates, Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign chair, told the New York Times the president “knows how much those of us who worked for him have suffered, and I hope he takes that into consideration if and when he grants any pardons”.
      Gates was one of many Trump aides convicted under the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow. After pleading guilty to financial fraud and lying to investigators, he was sentenced to 45 days in jail.
      Gates also told the Times his motivation for criticising Mueller in a recent book “was not to seek a pardon; it was to expose the truth about the Russia investigation”.
      Flynn, a retired general who was fired from the Defense Intelligence Agency by Barack Obama in 2014, became a trusted campaign surrogate for Trump. But Trump fired him as national security adviser after just 24 days on the job, for lying to Vice-President Mike Pence about contacts with Russian officials.
      He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was not sentenced before Trump pardoned him on Wednesday, saying: “Have a great life General Flynn!”
      Trump has already commuted a more than three-year sentence handed to Roger Stone, a longtime ally, for obstruction, lying to Congress and witness intimidation. More

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      in World Politics

      The Cult of Kek: An Archaic Belief System for an Alt-Right “New Age”

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      Pepe the Frog, the green character in Matt Furie’s “Boy’s Club” cartoons, is familiar on the internet. The alt-right started to use it to symbolize their battle against political correctness as well as the principles of liberty, equality and justice — the founding values of liberal democracy. The alt-right aims to restore traditional hierarchical society and a racial state. Pepe the Frog landed a role in this task, mainly because of the alt-right’s desire to use memes to spread their message far and wide. From its humble beginning as a cartoon character, Pepe the Frog made a meteoric rise when the alt-right renamed it Kek, establishing the Cult of Kek.

      Star Trek vs. the Radical Right: Visions of a Better World

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      The Cult of Kek appears to offer different things to different people based on what they seek. For those who enjoy creating or following memes, the Cult of Kek is satire. For others, it offers a religion, a deity, even a prayer to advance “meme magic.” However, at the heart of it, the Cult of Kek is neither satire nor religion but an arcane belief system firmly grounded in ancient Egyptian mythology.     

      Who Is Kek? 

      The ideology behind the Cult of Kek is explained in a series of eight books published under the pseudonym “Saint Obamas Momjeans” in 2016-17. The satirical pseudonym helps to keep the books from inviting serious analysis. Dan Prisk identifies this as “an ironic and irrelevant mode of communication” that seems to have the best of both worlds: the advantage of using “ironic humour” to attract attention and the ability to “hide true politics while openly promoting them.” “Nothing is as it seems” is the best adage to explain the Cult of Kek; even its “prayer” asks to “twist reality around the memes we make.”

      The term “meme magic” seems to have multiple meanings. First, meme magic is a reference to the accessibility and appeal of memes, which can attract followers and create thought movements. Second, the Cult of Kek wants memes to have perceived magical qualities, a pretext to attract followers and enthusiasts. As a 2015 essay published on Daily Stormer explains, “The trve power of skillful memes is to meme the karmic nation into reality, the process of meme magick. By spreading and repeating the meme mantra, it is possible to generate the karma needed for the rebirth of the nation.” But who is Kek, and in what context did the alt-right come to appropriate it?

      Embed from Getty Images

      “The One True Bible of Kek” is the primary source of the cult. This text introduces Kek as a figure who opposed the creation in favor of primordial chaos said to be a myth in the religion of ancient Egypt. Was there a Kek in ancient Egypt? Evidence can be traced back to the Egyptian Old Kingdom during 2575-2134 BC, where primordial Ogdoad was worshipped in Hermopolis on the banks of the Nile. Ogdoad was eight (male and female) personifications of nature, such as water, air, infinity and darkness. Among them, Kek and Keket represented primordial darkness. Kek is the male form with a frog head. The Papirus of Ani, dating back to 1450 BC, which forms a part of the Book of the Dead, mentions four of Ogdoad as humans, having heads of frogs and the other four of serpents.

      E.A. Wallis Budge, citing M. Maspero, links these ancient deities to the later forms of famous Egyptian gods: Kek and Keket as the early forms of Osiris and Isis. Such evidence indicates that the mythology of Kek dates back to the Old Kingdom period in Egypt. But what does the current iteration of Kek offer? What is the message behind the Cult of Kek?

      The Magic of Memes

      Kek is mainly associated with meme magic, which refers to the transferring of “idea viruses” online in order to change the subconscious. Memes are visually and textually appealing thought elements. They can spread like viruses, creating trends or habit-forming thought movements. For example, radical-right memes launch assaults against liberal democracy, and the Cult of Kek and its meme magic are part of this radical-right mobilization.

      Meme magic is believed to have started in 4chan and 8chan imageboards around 2015. It is created by an anonymous swarm, the so-called ANONs or anonymous members of the imageboards, producing one-line messages. The first book of the Kek series, “The Divine Word of Kek,” explains how to create and transfer memes. The book recommends further readings, such as Tom Montalk, William Walker Atkinson and Franz Bardon.

      Montalk is a German spiritualist interested in metaphysics. His website explains the world as a matrix control system led by the Illuminati. Atkinson is an American author who writes extensively on esoteric subjects and is known to be a theosophist. Bardon is a leading occultist known to be influenced by the likes of Éliphas Lévi and Aleister Crowley. The evidence confirms the initial suggestion that the Cult of Kek is neither satire nor religion but something of an arcane belief system.   

      One book of the Cult of Kek series, “Intermediate Meme Magic,” explains the story of Kek, citing authors such as E.A. Wallis Budge, an eminent British Egyptologist. This shows that the anonymous author used arcane knowledge to find a mascot for memetics. Their battle is said to be against “the degenerate left.” It tells the reader to “tear society apart so that you can rebuild it later without undesirable elements.” Another work, “Shadilay, My Brothers: Esoteric Kekism & You!” affirms that “This is truly the beginning of a new age.”

      Why did the alt-right apply an ancient deity to brand the modern practice of memetics? It may not be an accident, nor that they needed spiritualism to give their craft strong roots. Instead, the Cult of Kek sits precisely where the radical right connects with the broader new-age belief system. For example, Nouvelle Droite (New Right) thinkers such as Guillaume Faye were firm believers in “the Golden Age of a future humanity.”

      It is well known that the Nazis were influenced by messianic and millenarian myths. For example, Savitri Devi, famously referred to as Hitler’s Priestess, entwined the idea of the yuga cycle — the Hindu belief regarding the cyclical evolution of time — to give Germany’s National Socialists a new identity. Devi wanted the Nazis to end the corrupt world, ushering in the traditional and sacred Golden Age.

      It appears that the alt-right follows this tradition, borrowing from early extreme-right thinkers but positions the same beliefs in an entirely novel context — the postindustrial realm of cyberspace and memetics, creatively delivering age-old esoteric ideas to the present.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      US Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths rise amid Thanksgiving rush

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      The US reported 181,490 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a third daily rise in a row, as hospitalisations hit a record for a 16th day in succession, at 89,959.
      There were 2,297 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, the largest single-day rise since May, bringing the pandemic toll to 262,065 out of nearly 12.8m cases. The death rate is still lower than in the spring.
      The alarming numbers were reported as millions of Americans defied official advice against travel and gatherings for Thanksgiving.
      In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Joe Biden appealed for resilience and sympathised with those contemplating a holiday without loved ones.
      “I know this time of year can be especially difficult,” said the president-elect, whose wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in December 1972. “Believe me, I know. I remember that first Thanksgiving. The empty chair, silence that takes your breath away. It’s really hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks … It’s so hard to hope, to understand.
      “I’ll be thinking and praying for each and every one of you this Thanksgiving.”
      Biden’s transition team were unable to coordinate with federal authorities for two weeks after the election was called, as Donald Trump refused to concede. The president still has not taken that step, but has allowed transition funds to be released.
      Biden heralded the approach of apparently effective vaccines. The US was “on track for the first immunisations to begin by late December, early January”, he said.
      “We’ll need to put in place a distribution plan to get the entire country immunised as soon as possible, which we will do. It’s going to take time. And hopefully the news of the vaccine will serve as incentive to every American to take simple steps to get control of the virus.”
      Biden listed such steps, including wearing a mask, social distancing and more, which the Trump administration has been loath to seek to enforce, even at its own events. Trump, members of his family, aides and senior Republicans have fallen sick.
      “There’s real hope,” Biden insisted. “Tangible hope.”
      Later, in Washington, the newly 6-3 conservative supreme court sided with religious communities who sued to block New York state Covid restrictions on attendance at houses of worship. Amy Coney Barrett, the devout Catholic justice who replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, sided with other conservatives on the ruling.
      Avi Schick, an attorney for Agudath Israel of America, told the Associated Press: “This is an historic victory. This landmark decision will ensure that religious practices and religious institutions will be protected from government edicts that do not treat religion with the respect demanded by the constitution.”
      On Wednesday, New York saw more than 6,000 daily Covid cases for the first time since late April. Pennsylvania recorded more than 7,000 cases, its second-highest total since the pandemic began. Massachusetts and Nevada saw record case numbers.
      In Wyoming, the Republican governor, Mark Gordon, has opposed a mask mandate. On Wednesday, it was announced that he had tested positive.
      US airports saw around 900,000 to 1 million people a day pass through checkpoints from Friday to Tuesday, down around 60% from last year but some of the biggest crowds seen since the pandemic took hold. Typically, more Americans drive for Thanksgiving than fly.
      Officials – among them New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo – have been forced to cancel their own Thanksgiving plans in order to set an example. One who did not, Denver’s mayor, Michael Hancock, issued an apology on Wednesday.
      Having asked city staff and residents to avoid holiday travel, Hancock flew to Mississippi to spend the holiday with his wife and youngest daughter.
      “I made my decision as a husband and father,” he said, “and for those who are angry and disappointed, I humbly ask you to forgive decisions that are born of my heart and not my head.” More

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      in US Politics

      After Flynn pardon, could Trump do the same for himself?

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      Donald Trump’s pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn has ignited speculation that he may be planning a broader swath of pardons in his last weeks in office, especially given – most controversially – his own previously expressed view that it is within his own power to pardon himself.Trump’s pardon of Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI, follows his commutation of the jail sentence of his ally and self-professed political dirty trickster, Roger Stone.The renewed speculation, however, raises numerous issues, both legal and practical. Questions about whether Trump is considering pardons for associates, members of his family and even himself have been driven in large part by his own apparent obsession with the issue, which has been well documented since at least 2017.According to a CNN report earlier this month, which featured interviews with unnamed former aides, Trump has asked both about self-pardons as well as pardons for his family, even asking if he could issue pardons pre-emptively for things people could be charged with in the future.“Once he learned about it, he was obsessed with the power of pardons,” the former official told the cable network. “I always thought he also liked it because it was a way to do a favour.”Trump himself has been explicit about his view he can pardon himself, tweeting in 2018: “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?”As legal experts have made clear as well in recent days, Trump is not facing any active criminal investigation, with the attorney general, William Barr, following US Department of Justice guidelines that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.But can Trump actually pardon himself?Those legal scholars who believe it is within his power, point to the open-ended text of the clause in the constitution on pardon rights that says: “The president … shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment,” which – theoretically at least – suggests no explicitly described limits on pardon power.One issue, however, Trump is likely to run into, which he acknowledged himself in his 2018 tweet, is a supreme court ruling dating back to 1915 that concluded that any pardon carries an implicit imputation of guilt. In Trump’s case, this could only be for criminal acts committed in office and could hamper his plans to run again for president in 2024.That meaning was recognised by Richard Nixon, who was initially wary of accepting the preemptive pardon offered by Gerald Ford at the time of his resignation from the presidency after the Watergate affair, believing himself innocent.And while legal experts have suggested there is no explicit constitutional prohibition on a president self-pardoning, they point to a justice department memo written in 1974 in the light of the Nixon crisis.“Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the president cannot pardon himself,” the Office of Legal Counsel wrote in August 1974.As Keith Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University specialising in constitutional theory told the Guardian in 2018: “The president could surely issue a valid pardon to his own associates (though abusing his pardoning power might itself be an impeachable offence).“It is less clear that the president could issue a pardon to himself. Conceptually, the pardon is an act of mercy, and that would seem to imply that it is only possible to bestow mercy on someone else and so there is an implicit bar against a self-pardon.“Certainly, attempting to do so could be regarded as an impeachable offence as an abuse of power, but whether a court should ultimately respect the validity of such a pardon is a much more difficult question.”Finally, even if Trump were to try to pardon himself it might be of only limited value. His power to pardon applies only to federal statutes, still leaving him vulnerable to criminal and civil prosecution in state courts, not least in Manhattan, where Trump and the Trump Organization are under active investigation.Trump’s pardon plansWho can President Trump pardon?The constitution is vaguely worded on the issue of pardon power. Previous presidents have pardoned relatives (Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger), aides, businessmen, and Gerald Ford famously pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon.How does it work?There is an office at the Department of Justice that deals with pardons but it has largely been short-circuited by Trump, who has responded to requests from rightwing allies and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian. Jared Kushner has been put in charge of the pardons issue and some speculate that might mean a pardon for his father, Charles, who was convicted in 2005 of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering.So who is in the frame?Trump has made it clear he still holds a grudge over the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and some names that have come up are related to that. Michael Flynn was pardoned on Wednesday and Roger Stone’s sentence has already been commuted. Others reportedly seeking pardons include campaign advisers Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. Steve Bannon, his former strategist, who has been indicted for defrauding donors, and Elliott Broidy, a top fund-raiser, have also been mentioned.Is that all?Far from it. Lists of names are reportedly circulating. The media has mentioned a plethora of Trump and Trump family associates, and Trump has reportedly asked aides about the issue of pardons for members of his own family, although it is not clear what for. Finally Joe Exotic, the former Oklahoma zoo keeper convicted of hiring a hitman to kill a rival, has apparently also been campaigning to get Trump’s attention in a bid for clemency. More

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      in World Politics

      International Monitors Found No Fraud in US Election

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      This month’s election was no doubt the most dramatic in recent US history. Given the highly bipartisan political atmosphere, at 67%, voter turnout was the highest since 1900. Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there were 20% fewer polling stations open across the country. An unprecedented 65 million voters opted for mail-in ballots, raising fears that the US Postal Service may not be able to handle the amount of traffic in a timely manner. President Donald Trump had already laid the groundwork in the preceding months to claim that the election will be stolen from him and, true to his brand, his team promptly filed 36 legal challenges to contest the results; to date, 29 of these have been unsuccessful.

      Donald Trump’s Treason Against the American People

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      More than three weeks after the election, Trump has not officially conceded. The president and his supporters are vociferously and aggressively claiming voter fraud. President-elect Joe Biden and his camp, alongside US election and security officials, are unequivocal that there is no evidence of foul play. At this time of bitter impasse, it would be invaluable to refer to a truly objective, unbiased third party. Fortunately, there is one.

      Election Monitoring

      The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was founded in 1975. It consists of 57 member countries, and the United States is one of them. A key raison d’être of the OSCE is election monitoring. It assesses whether elections are “characterized by equality, universality, political pluralism, confidence, transparency and accountability.” The OSCE has observed over 300 elections globally, both in established democracies like Canada and the UK as well as in countries like Croatia and Ukraine, where the democratic tradition is still tenuous. A multinational team of experts is on hand before, during and after the vote. The methodology is thorough and transparent.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The organization has been observing every general and midterm election in the US since the 2000 disputed contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Its presence is particularly relevant at this moment in US history. The OSCE planned to deploy some 500 observers in the 2020 election, but the number was reduced due to the pandemic. By early October, the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) to the US had some 130 international election monitors from 39 member nations on the ground. While some states did not allow international observers full access, most did. And even in states where the observers were not allowed in the polling stations, they at least examined the mail-in process. On the night of November 3, the OSCE delivered a detailed, 23-page report, the entirety of which is openly available on the internet. 

      The report covers a lot of ground: the political context and the legal framework of the electoral system; election administration and observation; voter rights, registration and identification; candidate registration (no room for birther controversy here); campaign environment and finance; the role of the media; legal complaints and appeals; as well as new voting technologies and the conduct of the election itself. It also explains IEOM’s process, observations, analysis, conclusions and recommendations.

      Anyone with any doubt about possible voter fraud and whether the election was legal will be assuaged by the report’s conclusion that “The 3 November general elections were competitive and well managed” and that, “In general, IEOM interlocutors expressed a high level of confidence in the work of the election administration at all levels.”

      The report also offers two chilling warnings. First, it states that “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.” Second, it surmises that “Numerous ODIHR interlocutors noted that the judiciary has become highly politicized and indicated that this would have an impact on the rules governing the holding of these elections and possibly the outcome.” This report is preliminary. The IEOM remains on the task and will release a final report in early January.

      Virtually Ignored

      Interestingly, the presence of international election monitors in this United States has been virtually ignored by the media, the public and the politicians themselves. On the one hand, it’s understandable. Given the US-centric focus of many Americans, they may not even be aware of the role international observers play in US elections. Those who claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump are certainly not going to point out that there is an objective assessment of the validity of the voting process. In fact, President Trump fired the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, for stating that this election was “the most secure in American history.”

      But why are the Democrats, the left-wing media and indeed anyone interested in proving beyond doubt that the election was fair ignoring the OSCE findings? Perhaps they don’t want to rely on any outside institutions to determine the validity of their election. Or maybe they feel that international monitors are only for banana republics, not for established democracies — and certainly not for the world’s oldest democracy. Pride goes before the fall.

      Susan Hyde, a professor of political science at the University of Berkeley, California, and an experienced international election monitor, says that “In countries that are very divided, it can be hard for citizens to know which sources of information are objective because it seems like every domestic audience has a dog in the fight.” She explains that international observers can “act as an external but credible resource for voters and for political parties.” International monitoring missions do not stand for Democrats or for Republicans — they stand for democracy.

      On the one hand, it may be ironic that the United States should be in need of the services of international election monitors. But it would be even more tragic if the US did not use their essential, objective and readily available expertise and their vital findings at this critical juncture in its democracy.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More