The authorities have hassled groups that train election monitors in Kyrgyzstan or promote land rights in Laos.
For the elections in 2004 and 2005, thousands of newly trained election workers, both men and women, traveled the countryside, sometimes by horse or donkey.
In the Nov. 2 parliamentary election the United States spent $2.4 million on projects to set up a voter registry, train election workers and sponsor debates.
Though the early voting might relieve pressure on Tuesday, some states said they feared they did not have enough trained election workers to staff polling stations.
Voters, poll workers and poll watchers complained of one- and two-hour waits, overcrowding, inaccurate translations and poorly trained election inspectors.
The United States and the European Union are doing their part for a free and fair election, supporting election observers and helping to train election officials, encourage voter education and protect the rights of candidates and voters.
The generals raised serious doubts about their agenda when they objected to Washington using some of its military aid to train election workers and political party operatives on a nonpartisan basis.
Glenn Cowan, who as a consultant to the United States Agency for International Development has trained election monitors overseas since 1985, said somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 monitors had been deployed by various organizations.
The primary election, in September, which also used the new system, was marred by so many late openings at polling sites, inoperable voting machines and poorly trained election workers that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called the board's performance a "royal screw-up".
