History
The first monitored election was that of a plebiscite in Moldavia and Wallachia that was monitored by most of the major European powers. Election monitoring was uncommon until after World War II. Election observation activities have expanded significantly following the end of the Cold War, along with the development of international standards on the conduct of democratic elections and the process of monitoring elections by both international and domestic observing organizations.
In the 1990s, international election observation focused on elections in countries with weak democracies or democracies in transition. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing number of observer mission monitoring elections in long-standing democracies, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Read more about this topic: Election Monitoring
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—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)