ODIHR and OSCE Parliamentary Assembly State the U.S. Has Not Invited the OSCE to Observe the 2026 Midterms, the First U.S. Federal Elections Since 2002 Without an Invitation

On 23 September 2026 the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) published a joint press release saying the “decision not to invite the OSCE to observe the 2026 mid-term congressional elections in the United States is regrettable.” Their count: since 2002 the OSCE has observed 12 U.S. federal elections, six of them mid-terms, and these will be the first for which it “has not received an invitation.” They state the decision is “not in line with” the 1990 Copenhagen Document commitment to invite observers. ODIHR Director Maria Telalian said “Election observation is not a judgment on a country or its institutions”; OSCE PA President Pere Joan Pons called it “a significant departure from an established democratic practice.”

What the primary does and does not say

• The ‘since 2002’ claim holds, in ODIHR’s own words. The 2002 date is when the OSCE began observing U.S. federal elections; it is not a statement about an unbroken invitation record in a different form. ODIHR’s count of 12 matches every federal cycle from 2002 through 2024.
• The primary attributes the decision to “the United States,” not to Trump personally. No decision-maker, decision date, or U.S. government statement appears in the release. The tracker’s “Trump declined” is shorthand; the documented fact is a non-invitation. Democracy Docket (2026-09-16) says it does not know when or by whom the decision was made, and reports that the State Department did not immediately respond.
• Date kinds. 23 September 2026 is the announcement date (ODIHR publicly confirming the absence of an invitation). A week earlier ODIHR was still “waiting on that invitation” (Democracy Docket, 16 September). The Hill piece the tracker cites reached the Oct 15-16 tracker via press pickup (UNN’s relay is dated 14 October); none of those is the decision date, which is unknown.
• Mechanism. ODIHR sends a needs assessment mission only after the host state invites it; so absence of invitation means no mission is possible, and it is the host state’s act or omission that decides.

Not verified

• Any State Department or White House statement of reasons: none found in a fetchable primary. Search-summary text attributes a rationale to a State Department spokesperson and a White House spokesperson (Lauren Biss), but those lines were not read at a fetchable source and are not carried here. The Hill original returned HTTP 403.
• Claims in secondary coverage tying the omission to a reported U.S. push to cut OSCE budget or to DOJ sending its own monitors are not established by the ODIHR release.

Related: 2026-06-09–doj-dismantles-federal-election-oversight-before-midterms