Russian Delegates Witness History on Election Day
Parliamentary aide Mariya Ponomareva (top right) takes a question during a roundtable on "Comparing U.S. and Russian Elections" at Minnesota State University Moorhead, which hosted her delegation. Also participating were (front, L to R) delegates Anastasiya Shevaldova, a legislative affairs specialist for Tomsk city; Ella Bondarenko, an aide to a Kaliningrad regional legislator; and Yekaterinburg election official Svetlana Ioshina. Translator Dennis Kovalev stands at top left.

A core purpose of Open World is to allow emerging foreign leaders to see American democracy in action. For the 38 Russian delegates who took part in last month's special Open World program on elections and the media, this meant a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit polling places and newsrooms across the United States as record numbers of Americans voted in national, state, and local elections on Nov. 2.

Election Day Round-Up

Election Day began early in Rochester, NY, for Vladimir Pavlovskiy of the Krasnoyarsk Worker and the other newspaper editors in his delegation, who accompanied excited first-time student voters being bussed from school to their polling stations. On the other side of the Empire State, Russian city officials hosted in Saratoga Springs spent a late night watching reporters at Albany NewsChannel 13 compile their election coverage.

With the Washoe County clerk as their guide, Russian newspaper and TV staff in Reno, NV, saw onsite demonstrations of electronic voting and quizzed poll workers on technical issues. In Bartow County in northern Georgia, Stravropol Pravda editor-in-chief Vasiliy Balditsyn and his fellow delegates toured local precincts with the county Republican Party chairman. Across the country in Portland, OR, Russian journalists learned about the state's unique vote-by-mail system from a freelance reporter who served as their escort for the day; later, they rushed to file their "on the spot" stories on the unfolding election drama in between visiting ballot drop-off sites and meeting U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden.

In Baltimore, four Russian women leaders, all veterans of political campaigns, held an open discussion on press freedom with Baltimore Sun editor Will Englund while getting an inside look at the paper's election reporting. Novaya Gazeta's Irina Gordiyenko and other Russian journalists in Louisville, KY, were part of an enthusiastic crowd attending U.S. Rep. Anne Northrup's victory speech at a downtown hotel, while delegates staying in Moorhead, MN, had a busy night making the rounds of Democratic and Republican party celebrations in their host city and neighboring Fargo, ND.

Filarit Salikhov (right), the chair of the Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk, local legislature, examines a mechanical voting machine with Ulyanovsk city election official Oleg Korotin (center) and facilitator Grigoriy Yarygin (left) in Quaker Springs, NY.

Insights and Ideas

Being able to see for themselves the long lines of people waiting to vote made a deep impression on the visiting Russians. "We never expected so many people to come and vote," one journalist reported to Open World from Louisville. "There is a presumption in Russia that Americans don't really care about elections, since changing the president doesn't necessarily change someone's lifestyle." Another participant said that, thanks to their onsite visits, delegation members "could clearly see how the people in the U.S. did believe that it was THEIR choice and their vote did count and was important."

For the Baltimore participants, personal expressions of support for candidates — like bumper stickers and campaign buttons — were a new concept, and at least one delegate wants to use them in her future campaign work. A delegate who observed get-out-the-vote efforts in Saratoga Springs said that one of the lessons he will take back to Russia is that "the phenomenon of 'volunteers' who work for the different political parties during the election campaign ... is very important for the political culture of the U.S., because it makes people involved in the political process."

There was general surprise among the Russians at the openness and accessibility of local politicians, and an equal amount of perplexity at the role of the Electoral College. Delegates' hosts were in turn surprised to learn that in Russia, voters can choose "none of the above" and electioneering is banned the day of the election — two practices that several of the Russians' new American friends found appealing.

Opinions on the role of the American media in elections were almost as numerous as the delegates themselves, with many impressed by the degree of objectivity that the editors and reporters they met with brought to their work, and others noting that, as one said, "it was possible to notice the political bias of particular TV channels and newspapers." The journalists also used their time at media outlets to ask questions about issues ranging beyond election coverage; as the Douglas County (GA) Sentinel reported, the delegates "wanted to know how the newspaper operated, its affiliation with local government, and whether advertisers had any influence over editorial content."

Other Highlights

A highlight for the Rochester visitors was their sit-down session with U.S. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, who fielded questions on the election and her political career. Election post-mortems with top editors and reporters at the New York Times, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and the Portland Oregonian also got high marks from the participating Russians. And delegates in Baltimore will long remember a lucky encounter with Mayor Martin O'Malley at Kerry campaign headquarters that turned into a full-blown meeting.

Local hosting for this exchange was provided by the Baltimore County League of Women Voters, the Georgia Council for International Visitors, the League of Women Voters of Saratoga County, the League of Women Voters of the Rochester Metropolitan Area, Minnesota State University Moorhead, the National Peace Foundation, the Northern Nevada International Center, and the World Affairs Council of Oregon. The national host organizations were the Academy for Educational Development, Meridian International Center, the National Peace Foundation, and the USDA Graduate School International Institute.

Published by The PBN Company for the Open World Leadership Center, whose Open World Program has hosted over 9,000 citizens from Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan since its inception in 1999. The Center is an independent legislative branch agency that works cooperatively with the U.S. Department of State and other U.S. executive and judicial branch agencies. For additional information, please visit the Open World Leadership Center's website at www.openworld.gov or contact the office at +1 202-707-8943.