ELECTION2020

Europe’s largest security organization said Friday that it has drastically scaled back plans to send as many as 500 observers to the U.S. to monitor the Nov. 3 presidential election and nowwill deploy just 30 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — which has observed U.S. elections since 2002 — has spent months trying to fifigure out how to safely keep tabs on an election it worries will be “themost challenging in recent decades” as Americans pick a president in the throes of a global health crisis.

The use of mail-in voting is expected to increase in many states this year, with voters seeing that as a safer alternative to casting ballots in-person during the pandemic. Although President Donald Trump has claimed that an increase in mail ballots could lead to a rigged election, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud involving voting by mail in the U.S.

The OSCE’smission originally was to have involved 100 long-term and 400 short-term observers to the U.S. starting thismonth, but health concerns and restrictions on travel prompted the Vienna-based organization to pare that back to 30 observers, spokesperson Katya Andrusz told The Associated Press.

Suddenly, what was going to be Europe’s largest-scale U.S. election monitoring effffffffffffort ever has become one of its smallest. The OSCE sent 49 observers for the 2018 midterms and about 400 for the 2016 presidential election.

“While we had planned to send a full- flfledged election observation mission, the safety fears as well as continuing travel restrictions caused by the COVID19 pandemic are creating challenges,” Andrusz said in an email.