In late September, an OSCE expert group who studied the conditions of the forthcoming presidential elections made public its report. The group of five experts led by Ambassador Christian Strohal, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, was in the US from September 7 to 10.
The report warned about the possibility of procedural violations during the US elections, which run counter to the generally recognised democratic norms and are fraught with protracted litigation after the elections. The authors of the report spotlighted the new practice of provisional ballots for persons who had not been put on the election lists.
The counting of such ballots and their registration in the overall results should be held only after the subsequent official confirmation of the voter's right to take part in the elections. However, says the report, the US has not elaborated standard requirements and parameters for such confirmation, which may take more than 30 days in some cases.
If the number of votes cast for the candidates will be comparable, the above situation may provoke post-election disputes and litigation, which may put off the announcement of election results, say the OSCE experts.
In the evening of November 2, the leading American television companies stopped making forecasts of the outcome of the elections after John Kerry had refused to admit his defeat and demanded, via his election staff, to finish the counting of provisional ballots in Ohio. At that time, the difference in Ohio was about 136,000, but, according to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, about 175,000 provisional ballots had not been counted yet.
Kerry refused to recognise the victory of Bush and, though Bush was sure of his supremacy, he did not deliver the speech, telling several thousand of his supporters, who had been waiting for him in the Reagan Centre for over six hours, to go home.
After weighing the pros and cons, John Kerry decided to stop fighting in Ohio and admitted his defeat at midday on November 3. If the Democratic candidate had demanded the counting of provisional ballots, this would have taken very long because by Ohio laws the counting of these ballots can begin only 11 days after the elections. In this case, America would have learned who became its new president no sooner than on November 13, many experts say.
