A competitive marketplace of election monitors has emerged, allowing autocrats to cherrypick which observers to rely on in their bid to legitimize elections. We argue that Commonwealth of Independent States Interparliamentary Assembly observers perform two functions: (1) they directly legitimize authoritarian governments and (2) they engage in norm contestation, discrediting the work of the OSCE and other international organizations. CIS observers imitate the language of OSCE observers but come to very different conclusions. We use plagiarism software to uncover the extent to which members are harmonizing legislation and election observers are copying conclusions verbatim from other countries.