Who Is Left to Credibly Judge Latin America’s Elections?

Legitimate election monitors must be invited into Latin American countries, and candidates should pledge to respect the rulings of these groups.

Author

  • Christopher Sabatini

    Dr. Christopher Sabatini, is a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, and was formerly a lecturer in the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. Chris is also on the advisory boards of Harvard University’s LASPAU, the Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch's Americas Division, and of the Inter-American Foundation. He is also an HFX Fellow at the Halifax International Security Forum. He is a frequent contributor to policy journals and newspapers and appears in the media and on panels on issues related to Latin America and foreign policy. Chris has testified multiple times before the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2015, Chris founded and directed a new research non-profit, Global Americas and edited its news and opinion website. From 2005 to 2014 Chris was senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas (AS/COA) and the founder and editor-in-chief of the hemispheric policy magazine Americas Quarterly (AQ). At the AS/COA, Dr. Sabatini chaired the organization’s rule of law and Cuba working groups. Prior to that, he was director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the National Endowment for Democracy, and a diplomacy fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, working at the US Agency for International Development’s Center for Democracy and Governance. He provides regular interviews for major media outlets, and has a PhD in Government from the University of Virginia.

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SANTIAGO, Chile — Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, people have lost confidence in elections and politicians. And just as voters are questioning the democratic process, the traditional watchdogs of electoral integrity — multilateral groups like the United Nations and the Organization of American States and others — are being undermined by governments throughout the hemisphere on both sides of the ideological spectrum.

The twin pressures of declining trust in elections and support for those who guarantee voting integrity create a problem: Who is left to credibly judge what may be controversial elections in the coming months in two of the region’s biggest countries, Mexico and Brazil?

Over the past 30 years, election observer groups have helped establish internationally respected standards for free and fair elections, protected voters’ rights in those elections and defused political upheaval when sore losers have tried to steal elections or contested results. This happened in the Dominican Republic in 1994, Peru in 2000, Mexico in 2006 and Ecuadorin 2017.

The power of neutral observers to defend free elections rests on a commitment from a government holding an election to the idea that these organizations have the right and authority to determine whether the voting was fair. That commitment is under assault.

To read more, please visit the New York Times.

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