The Tribune

with Charlie Harper

WE’RE in the late stages of a general election campaign here in The Bahamas, and word came yesterday from the Organisation of American States (OAS) that the organization has already “deployed our Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) to The Bahamas ahead of the elections. The OAS/EOM team of 21 experts and observers from 14 nations will focus its observation on electoral organization and boundaries, electoral technology, electoral justice, political-electoral finance and the political participation of women.”

Here's how the team will operate: “The OAS team will meet with government officials, electoral authorities, candidates, civil society leaders, among other actors to gather information on the electoral process. On election day, observers will monitor polling stations from the opening of the polls through the voting process and the tabulation and transmission of results. Following the vote, the EOM will issue a preliminary report detailing its findings and recommendations to strengthen Bahamian democratic institutions.

“This Mission—the fourth of its kind in The Bahamas following similar deployments in 2012, 2017, and 2021—is funded by contributions from Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Republic of Korea, Peru and the United States.”

Nice to see that US funding has helped sustain this worthwhile OAS mission. It’s also interesting to look back a couple of years and see how corresponding OAS observers assessed the American general elections of 2024.

That preliminary OAS report, dated just four days after the 2024 US general election, was a masterpiece of objectivity and tactful restraint, while maintaining a truthful clarity and cogent analysis. While OAS observers visited over a dozen states and Washington DC in their work, their report noted that Pennsylvania and West Virginia had refused to permit the OAS observers to do their job, and North Carolina never responded to an OAS request to observe.

And the report dryly notes that “in some jurisdictions where access was approved, our observers were at times received in an unfriendly manner or were unwelcomed in the performance of their duties.”

Overall, however, the OAS report is superb. It presages almost all of the issues that are presently plaguing preparations for the upcoming US midterm elections, and does so in a thorough, concise manner. If the organization’s mission that is now with us does as well as their colleagues did two years ago in America, we would all be well advised to heed their report and recommendations that will doubtless be issued not long after next Tuesday’s vote.

More specifically, the OAS report offered the following major recommendations after the US election: Promoting bipartisan efforts to encourage greater uniformity in voter registration requirements, procedures, and deadlines across states; increasing funding and staffing of electoral authorities at the state and local level to better accommodate the anticipated demand for early voting in person and by mail, and establishing deadlines for registration to vote via mail that allow ample time for election authorities to tally the vote; and encouraging jurisdictions to update their voting system certifications to the latest standards before each round of elections, in order to increase security and accessibility requirements.

Further suggestions included: Considering reforms to discourage excessive and/or frivolous litigation; promoting reform that delegates Congressional redistricting to bipartisan or non-partisan commissions instead of state legislators; considering reforming the governance structure of the Federal Elections Commission to ensure majority decisions, for example adding a nonpartisan seventh commissioner; undertaking greater federal-level efforts and continuing state-level efforts at enhancing transparency and accountability in the political finance system, including more stringent disclosure regulations and limiting the loopholes that allow for undisclosed donations through outside groups; and to open a public and intense debate on the use of social media platforms in electoral campaigns.

That’s a comprehensive and relevant list of potential American political reforms after 2024.  We can only imagine how the November election process in the US would look now if even a few of these reforms had actually been enacted. None has been, of course, because entrenched political and other affiliated groups see these suggestions as existential threats to their comfortable and well-cossetted way of life. 

And it’s not as though the OAS suggestions are all one-sided. For example, conservative Republican stalwart congressman Chip Roy of Texas has introduced the Collaborating with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to confirm the citizenship status of registered voters in real time. The OAS report specifically endorsed its passage and application, and the US House of Representatives did narrowly approve it in February. The Senate, however, cannot muster the necessary 60 votes to follow suit.

Democrats staunchly oppose the SAVE Act, fearing GOP abuse. But the OAS team felt that, if consistently applied, it could form the basis of ensuring that only those can vote who are legally entitled to do so.

That’s an objective that all voters could support.

There are other recommendations in the OAS report that seem to favour the Dems, such as ensuring and sometimes broadening voting rights for women and minorities.

The point is that we will likely see within two weeks an OAS observers’ report that should be filled with sensible, nonpartisan observations and recommendations that The Bahamas would do very well to study and endorse for future application here.

We’ll see soon enough the results of own upcoming election. But growing daily in the US is the belief that President Trump and the Republicans are heading for a substantial defeat in six months. In fact, according to numerous press reports, the White House is leading an effort to prepare its political appointees in public office to deal with the coming setbacks.

Speaking to reporters about the November elections, one senior GOP election official said “it’s obvious to everyone that a big defeat is very likely.” The White House Counsel’s Office is reportedly giving private briefings to the administration’s political appointees on how to best prepare for congressional oversight “as staff begin to brace for the likelihood of significant Democratic victories in the November midterm elections.”

The main reasons for Republican pessimism remain stubborn inflation in the US economy, gas and food price rises that have proven largely resistant to political manipulation by the current American administration, and a simultaneous sense of weariness and despair over the unprecedentedly mercurial, bizarre and seemingly illegal behaviour of Trump and his administration.

This is nowhere better exemplified than in US courts and their response to a massive increase in ligation brought both by and against the current administration, whose sweeping, mostly unilateral policy changes have stimulated more than 700 lawsuits.

In fact, according to an Associated Press analysis, in the second Trump administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating a specific court order in deciding at least 31 different lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass government layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices. The AP’s review also found that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, overruled the district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases.

The Trump administration violations in those 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance that judges have recently highlighted in penalizing the government for offenses ranging from failing to return seized property to keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges told reporters they could recall only a very few violations of such court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump's first time in office. They also noted that these previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges. The Trump administration's Justice Department has been defiantly combative in many cases.

Probably the single most provocative legal issue facing this US administration is its initiation and conduct of the war with Iran, which began and has continued without much prior consultation with Congress. The 1973 War Powers Act forbids the president from ordering American forces into a conflict without congressional approval unless the United States is under attack, and gives him 60 days to terminate such an operation if he does not secure authorization.

That 60 days has now passed since the February 28 start of US and Israeli attacks against Iranian defence installations that launched the current war, still with no congressional authorization. Trying to play catch-up, Trump sent a letter to Congress last Friday making the assertion that the war had “been terminated.”  Really?