MOSCOW, September 19. /TASS/. Russia is waiting to see the kind of assessment the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which reports to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, will give to the forthcoming election in the US where the electoral procedures quite often stand in a marked contrast to the commonly accepted international standards, Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's envoy for the rights of man, democracy and supremacy of law told Vesti FM radio.
"Double standards can be seen in the electoral system as clearly as in a prism," he said. "That's why it's really interesting how they will assess election in the US Given the European parameters and standards or the international electoral standards, US elections often look archaic or simply strange in many aspects, beginning with fierce campaigning (for the candidates) right on election day and right at the polling stations."
"They don't have an electoral silence day," Dolgov said. "Electoral officials (in the US) ring the voters up right from the polling stations and literally goad the registered voters to the polls."
"From the standpoint of the Russian and international standards, that's a really bizarre situation," he said.
"If these are your democratic traditions, you're welcome to follow them and please don't teach others about how the electoral processes should be organized," Dolgov said.
This year, ODIHR observers received the first ever invitation to monitor the presidential election in the US scheduled for November 8, 2016.
On Monday, representatives of the ODIHR monitoring mission spoke about the preliminary results of their activities at the September 18 parliamentary election in Russia.
Their report noted a growing transparency of the election campaign and improvements in the election law. However, the observers claimed they had noted restrictions on the work of mass media in the course of the campaign and the use of administrative levers in a number of regions.