With Voting Rights at Risk Across US, International Monitors Called to Help

With the right to vote “more vulnerable now than at any time in the past 50 years,” an American civil rights coalition is calling for an increase in international election monitors during the 2016 election.

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In a letter sent this weekend, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, comprised of more than 200 national organizations, urged the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to expand its election monitoring mission in the United States this November.

The body has sent observers to every U.S. presidential election since 2002 and intends to send 500 observers for 2016.

However, citing the 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA)—as well as recent news that as a result of the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Justice Department is scaling back its deployment of election observers in 2016—the group wrote “to emphasize that the OSCE’s plans to monitor the upcoming U.S. presidential election will be more essential than ever before and to encourage the OSCE to greatly expand its election monitoring mission in the United States for this election.”

The letter read:

The latter line refers to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s recent calls for supporters not only to vote on November 8, but also to “go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine.”