The decision not to invite observers from the OSCE puts the U.S. alongside Russia and Belarus, while the Justice Department prepares to deploy its own poll monitors.
The Trump administration declined to invite election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to witness the midterms, blocking monitors from the regional security group for the first time in more than two decades.
Their absence comes as Democrats and election integrity experts have raised concerns about potential election meddling after the Department of Justice announced plans to send its own monitors.
Washington joins only Russia and Belarus in its decision to exclude OSCE observers.
The OSCE called the U.S. decision “regrettable” and Human Rights Watch said the move “fuels fears of serious human rights concerns around the upcoming elections.”
tell me you are going to commit voting fraud without actually telling me you are going to commit voting fraud
Say it with me, America.
We.
Are.
Fucked.
My feeling is that they are trying to increase their ability to (falsely) claim that the elections were stolen (again). I would think having outside observers would be something you’d want to get rid of so that it’s easier to convince people of the lie/scam/coup.
U.S. elections are very robust especially compared to other western democracies’ systems. That won’t stop him from trying or even having some effect.
“i WoNdEr iF hEs gONnA rIg tHE eLEcTiOn gUys 🤡🤡🤡”
Americans, watching Trump actively rig the election
MAGAs in my family are so far lost in the sauce that they truly believe he’s the most fair and honest president in American history. They are so caught up in the right wing news machine that they don’t know how the regime’s policies are affecting the rest of America, and if they did, I don’t think they’d care because they’re old, rich, and have winning complexions.
“Raised concerns”
That’ll help. Well done.
“Refusing election observers is usually something that countries in a position of weakness do, when they know that they have corrupt or unfair elections,” said Dan Baer, a former U.S. ambassador to the OSCE during the Obama administration. “It’s very strange for the United States, which has been historically a standard setter in free and fair elections, to refuse observers.”
Strange? Has this doofus been around for the past 6 years?
What boggles the mind is Trump’s followers will not see the glaring hypocrisy here, assuming they hear about this at all.
A conservative is a fascist. That’s why it is not possible for them to see anything wrong with fascist moves. Even never-Trumper conservatives will support this, because all conservatives are fascist by nature.
or rather fascists like to call themselves conservatives, even though they’re not
Yup.
I like how this guy breaks it down, but the evidence starts from how they are raised.
They are going to lose big even with their cheating, they are so far underwater here, they will lose the house, probably the senate.
Their approval rating is hovering around the ebola virus, right behind covid.
The problem is that there isn’t way to enforce the vote anymore. Every institution and agency was allowed to be captured.
Todd Blanche, Tom Homan, and Kash Patel are not going to team up with SCOTUS and bring down Trump or MAGA. The military has been purged and is flying Nazi eagles and just gave the sieg heiling south African immigrant that stole all of our data keys to all of our top secret drone warfare platforms.
The other tech bros are part of this same program, and have been rolled into the military as their own unit, complete with their own ranks.
Once people have that level of clearance and information, the damage is done. The country we knew is dead and dark times are ahead. And it gets darker by the day with everyone playing “election”
Why can’t states call for OSCE monitors? States are in charge of elections, not the Fed, and certainly not the Fed DOJ.
I suspect if they tried, the OSCE monitors wouldn’t be allowed to enter the US.
Conservatism is fascism. Always has been. These fascists need to be erased in a permanent way.
It is immoral to keep any relationship with a conservative. Disown them. Delete them.
I suggest every Democrat voter put MAGA hat on so your vote is more like to be counted instead of being put in the trash and replaced by pre-filled paper.
Oh hey, who could’ve seen that one coming from President “Cheat like hell”?
You know why right?
Nothing says “integrity” like evading 3rd-party, external auditors.
I thought integrity was publicly out the window when there was a PSA about getting $5000 if you vote a certain way.
Yes, because obviously they are accounting for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle! Observing the result may change it!
This might be the most apt metaphor. The election is both legitimate and illegitimate until we open it up and take a look at it.
Washington joins only Russia and Belarus in its decision to exclude OSCE observers.
oh yeah, this isn’t concerning at all; look who we’re joining, absolute bastions of democracy.
Won’t someone rid us of this meddlesome oompa loompa?
America arms over 80% of actual dictatorships globally, which didn’t start with Trump, making us the most undemocratic nation in the world.
Yet, we only hear about the flaws in countries that don’t give us all their natural resources. 👍
Oh look, its the guy who claims Russia is the victim of the west, not under control of an kleptocracy at all.
Bruh, Russia is a corrupt shithole that makes even Trump look like a saint.
We’re fucked, right?
Yeah. It’s gonna be a real shitshow.
The dems are expecting an orderly process and just aren’t prepared.
People think Trump has a nice tidy “plan” but the plan is to just try everything.
You’ll never have to vote again.
We are not fucked. Everyone needs to vote like their life depends on it because it does.
If people don’t vote because of fear then we are fucked. It’s up to us to unfuck ourselves.
Vote AND take action. The US is well past the point where voting alone can dig them out of their mess.
Lol. Watch them sit it.out again, then blame the system for giving them ‘no choice’.
Sad to say, but it seems like some people I talk to still just don’t care enough. For them Trump is “bad”, but they don’t really follow the news closely enough to understand. So they won’t bother voting. It’s part apathy, but also part not understanding what’s really happening right now, which is the fault of mainstream media and propaganda.
I suspect there’s also some paralysis from not knowing what to do. Many US citizens seem to feel voting is futile, which is understandable: the Democrats seem to be scarcely better than Republicans save for a handful of issues, and some Democrats seem to be sliding to the right on those.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that more than voting is needed, but it’s much less clear on exactly what needs to and can be done with the limited capacity of the overworked, underpaid average American citizen.
If voting still works, and I hope it does, the other thing people need to do is run.
School board. Town Council. County government. State government. Friggin’ dog catcher.
We need real people. People who have worked and struggled. However, as you said…
the limited capacity of the overworked, underpaid average American citizen.
I’m not sure how anyone could manage it.
But… but, they’re both literally the same!
I’m certain that if the Dems won we’d still be looking at a looted government, a gutted FDA, a gestapo rounding up all “undesirables”, insanely high food and gas prices, and a possible rigged election involving a president running for a 3rd term.
And we all know voting does nothing so the best choice is to just not participate in any meaningful way so I can sit on my high horse and say I didn’t enable a a government that could have kept things together, but supported one or two things I didn’t like so if we instead eat the whole shit cake of everything we hate we just deserve it cause I made that choice for all of us.
/s
While I agree with the heart of your comment, the true test is what Democrats do when they have more power. Historically, Democrats have often retained and even advanced policy they previously denounced, such as when Obama era politicians renewed and even extended parts of the Patriot Act.
Fair criticism. However, we’d be a hell of a lot better off with the party of the status quo than we are now. Thousands of Americans wouldn’t be in foreign labor prisons or countries they have no ties to right now.
But they are literally the same
More like,
“Like 5 Democrats are not willing to give trans people cookies or openly state that Israel is evil so we much not vote for any Democrats to teach the party a lesson by letting the Christo Fascist assholes take over.”
/s?
Don’t get me wrong, we need to vote blue, whatever the option at the moment, but long-term voting blue isn’t going to get us out of where we are.
Give it a rest sheep.
I’d rather watch Trump become an emperor and American “democracy” end under the kind of authoritarianism this country has spent generations imposing on other nations than cast another vote for a Zionist Democrat who tells me I have to support them because the alternative is Trump.
Maybe then people will finally decide the system is worth resisting. At this point, I don’t have much faith in that either.
Go ahead. Downvote this to hell. Call me unhinged. Tell me I’m selfish. Tell me I have to accept sacrificing my people so you can preserve your comfort, and then keep calling yourselves our allies while you openly decide which minorities are expendable, starting with trans people.
“First they came…” and all that.
When you spend years teaching people that solidarity only flows one way, eventually they believe you.
If your political position is that minorities must keep being sacrificed to protect you from something worse, don’t be surprised when those minorities stop volunteering for the sacrifice. Don’t be surprised when, eventually, we aren’t there to save you either.
You told us this was the deal. You keep telling us this is the deal.
I’m done with the “vote for the lesser evil so we can live to fight another day” argument. That line stops working when the supposed lesser evil has helped slaughter enormous numbers of people and expects our votes without remorse, accountability, or even a meaningful change in course.
You don’t get to demand unconditional political loyalty from people whose lives and families you have already decided are negotiable.
When you’re ready to actually be an ally, assuming we survive long enough to have that conversation, come find us.
Then maybe we can build something better together: a political system that treats human beings as ends in themselves, not as expendable constituencies whose suffering can always be justified by pointing to someone worse.
You are fucked, good luck.
Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays!
Is this sarcasm?
Even if MAGA doesn’t tamper with the election to keep control of Congress, we’ve seen already what Dems do when they get power back. They keep most of the fascistic policies implemented by the red team, drag their feet prosecuting any of the MAGA leadership, continue our imperialist foreign policy unchecked, and refuse to implement widely popular domestic programs.
Our only recourse is working class solidarity. General Strike.
EDIT: To clarify my point - yes, we should vote in November. But just voting - even if it results in Dem supermajorities in Congress - will not save us. The Dems generally don’t go out of their way to persecute the working class, but they don’t fight for us either. They are the “good cop” who gets us to cooperate with the billionaire agenda because we don’t want them to send in the “bad cop” (MAGA) again. The only way they will do our bidding is if we force them, and we do that with a general strike.
I agree with the general strike, but we also need an opposition party with power to do something during and after the strike.
It’s not all made up fiction and both sides are not the same.
Apathy of the populace and cynicism got us here and we have to push back against that to get out of it.
They are not the same. But they work for the same team and we’re not on it (unless you’re a billionaire on Lemmy).
The Dems will only do our bidding if we make them. And we make them by having a general strike.
Dude I full agree with you. We need all of these things.
Yeah, but we’re not gonna get what we want. We may get a Dem majority for two years. We may even get a Dem president in 28. And then most people will go back to sleep while our government continue to support genocide and imperialism, continue to fund ICE while doing the bare minimum to reign in their most egregious behavior, continue to say we can’t have Medicare for All, and continue to obfuscate and delay release of the redacted portions of the Epstein files.
Even here on Lemmy, a platform full of people with non-mainstream views, there is so much resistance to what I’m saying. It makes me feel hopeless.
EDIT: clarity, no content changes
I get the hopelessness, but if you give into it then you become a part of what you’re worried about.
The option to hope might feel pointless but it’s literally the only rational option because it gives you a chance even if it’s slim. The other path is no chance at all and I can’t accept that.
I encourage everyone to check their cynicism, it’s a drug, it feels good, it feels practical, and it always leads to ruin.
Joe Biden spent his first two days in office breaking the record for executive actions.
I am old enough to remember that most of these were either doing things that Trump SHOULD have done to address Covid but refused to (as the article points out) or were just undoing what Trump did as the previous record holder fro his first term.
Like,i get it. Biden was a neoliberal and a capitalist. The DOJ should have put Trump in jail long.before he had an opportunity to run for office again. But this BoTh SiDeSrhetoric is factuay inaccurate and actively pro-fascist.
Yes, he did the bare minimum.
And look where we are now.
He and his party should have fought like hell to make sure this couldn’t happen again. They didn’t. And those of us who are old enough to have observed the trend line in our political history should already have figured out why.
Por que no los dos?
You got something to lose by voting anyway?
Are you incapable of enacting change both within and outside the bounds of the system?
Or is it just a zero sum game?
I never said I wouldn’t vote, and I added an edit to my comment that clarifies my position several minutes before you posted this response.
Ah, gotcha. But yes I agree. Voting is the first step to change, but cannot be the only step.
It will be the only step though. Even right now with fascists in power most of the working class refuse to even consider trying to shut down the economy and demand real change. What do you think will happen when Dems get power back?
Well when the cost of living is high and wages are low it’s hard for most people to think about risking their job to protest or strike when it could mean losing your housing and going hungry.
What I think if Dems can wrestle power back is try to start fixing the shit the Repubs broke. Only issue is it’s gonna be slow af because they’ll work inside the bounds of the law and won’t force shit through like the current admin is doing.
What this article is positing is that they are rigging the election, so voting won’t help
Right but it cannot be rigged it’s too decentralized. They will try to fuck with it but if everyone votes its too big to rig.
They rigged the 24 elections, strange to assume they can’t do it.
There’s a difference between outsized influence and full rigging.
I said before I fully expect them to attempt to influence the election in illegal ways.
If the people stand up against this, however, they can’t stop it.
Rigging requires nationalized elections which we don’t have and never should have.
There is a failure of imagination. With all levers of power and industry behind them, I don’t discount any threat to rig election. Too many impossible things have already happened
“I was president, then I wasn’t. Then they rigged the election and now I’m president again”
- Trump, on video.
WTF? It doesn’t matter if true.
Make sure to vote
If they’re going to cheat, force them to
?
If everyone who thinks the republicans will cheat doesn’t vote, then the republicans may very well win without cheating. If they’re committed to winning even if they have to cheat to do it, vote anyways so that they only win because they cheat.
Oh we are absolutely fucked. Just wait until they sweep the midterms and have nothing to lose. Martial law if we’re lucky.
No. But yes, with our leadership. But if we got new leadership we would win. But we won’t, because even half of you guys trust them and our online spaces are full of chatbots and influence agents bullying us into accepting the next biden or kamala.
