"Some 600,000 citizens residing in the District of Columbia do not have the right to vote in the Congressional elections and some 4 million residents of US overseas territories do not have the right to vote in any federal elections. An estimated 5.8 million citizens are disenfranchised due to a criminal conviction, including some 2.6 million who have served their sentences. This disproportionately impacts African Americans, as they are overrepresented in the penitentiary system," the report released on Wednesday said.
"There is no federal-level election management body in charge of administering and organizing election procedures. Individual states are responsible for administering elections… interlocutors expressed concerns about the reliability of new voting technologies in a number of localities due to lack of resources for maintenance and the replacement of old equipment," the report said.
The OSCE’s head of US election monitoring Audrey Glover told reporters earlier in October that a number of US states might not allow international observers into local polling stations on the election day.
In the US electoral system, individual states administer elections, including those for federal offices such as president and Congress. Laws in some US states prohibit international observers at polling stations, but others — Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota — allow them.
