The Thicket at State Legislatures

Election Observation--In the U.S. and Abroad

by Wendy Underhill

Everyone who’s reading this is an “election observer” in one way or another. But not everyone has had the chance to be an official election observer at a local polling place in the United States much less in an international setting. The Helsinki Commission, made up of members of Congress, and its partner, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) , are changing that, one election at a time, both here and abroad.

According to the OSCE, 49 states (Connecticut is the exception) permit partisan election observers and 43 states allow non-partisan observers. But as of January 2010, only South Dakota and Missouri, plus the District of Columbia, explicitly permit international observers. And yet, when international observers have come to the U.S. and have spent time at the polls with election administrators, the response from both sides has been overwhelmingly positive, according to the commission. The National Association of Secretaries of State recently adopted a resolution to encourage international observers here at home, providing sort of a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” for the concept.

Neil Simon, communications director for the OSCE, which manages most international election teams, says that legislators, legislative staff and election administrators are especially desirable as observers abroad. (NCSL has created a 5-minute video interview with Simon about international observers.) He’s also the point person on model state legislation (in short and long versions) to permit international observers. Legislation can be comprehensive, or it can be as simple as inserting the phrase, “and international observers,” into existing statutes.

Note: This article originally appeared in NCSL's newsletter covering state election law, The Canvass.

Flawed Democracy

by Karl Kurtz

The message of NCSL's Trust for Representative Democracy to an increasingly cynical and disaffected public is, Representative democracy works, not without flaws, but better than any conceivable alternative. It's a corollary of Winston Churchill's famous adage, "Democracy is the worst form of government--except for all others."

Implicit in these statements is the idea that no democracy, whether found in the American states or in countries around the world, is perfect. All of them have significant flaws.

That has been so much a part of my thinking for so long that I was brought up short, and somewhat amused, by reading The Economist's Democracy Index 2010 (free but registration required), which classifies countries into four categories: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes.

If it were up to me, I would call the highest category "flawed democracies" and find some other term for the second level.

The rankings in this report are based on the scores for each country in five areas: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Unlike another ranking for African countries that we have looked at in The Thicket, the functioning of government category includes an explicit item about the legislature: "Is the legislature the supreme political body, with a clear supremacy over other branches of government?" That's great, but it doesn't tell us who determines the answer to the question or what the criteria are. The scores on the 59 other variables that make up the index seem to be a combination of expert opinion (though the experts are not identified) and ratings from the World Values Survey and other survey instruments.

Despite these complaints, the scores, summarized in the map below, for the countries that I have worked in or know a fair amount about seem right.