Flashback: U.S. once decried an election with expelled observers, absentee boxes and 90% turnout

Sixteen years before the 2020 presidential contest in America, the U.S. government decried as corrupt an earlier election where special voting boxes were created to help citizens vote from home, election observers were expelled from vote counts, pre-election polls were wildly off, and voter turnout in certain communities exceeded 90%.

The 2004 presidential election in Ukraine saw suspiciously high turnout rates that “even Stalinist North Korea would envy,” the State Department declared in 2004 after an election in the former Soviet republic infuriated the administration of President George W. Bush.

The famously and endemically corrupt Ukraine under then-Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is, of course, a far cry from the United States when it comes to election integrity. But the story of that Ukrainian election as recounted by then-Ambassador John Tefft to a Senate committee in December 2004 raises a tantalizing question for conservatives distrustful of the Nov. 3 elections here: If tactics and outcomes in the Ukrainian election back then were enough to cry foul, why can’t Americans debate similar concerns here?