Politico: “The first 2020 U.S. election report by international observers makes for sober reading, Ryan Heath emails us. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — which has 47 member countries including the U.S. — has deployed 30 experts around the U.S. to monitor all aspects of the election through October. While that’s well short of the 500 the organization hoped to bring (thanks Covid-19!), they’ll be joined by another 100 members of Parliament for the week of Election Day, Nov. 3. Among the report’s observations: Around 9.8 million Americans citizens can’t vote for their representatives. “Citizens resident in the District of Columbia and in U.S. territories are not fully represented in the Congress,” the report notes. “Some 5.2 million citizens, about half of whom have served their sentences, are disenfranchised due to criminal convictions. These restrictions disproportionally affect racial minorities.” In addition, “campaign expenditure is unrestrained” — thanks to court decisions and lack of a Federal Election Commission quorum — and will total around $11 billion. OSCE concluded that although America’s news media is “highly polarized,” the country’s 1,758 television stations, 15,460 radio stations and 1,300 news print publications help us wade through rising misinformation…”