Elections, as is obvious, are of course a key aspect of democratic rule, and part of the essential framework for developing democratic polities. However, and significantly, as our colleagues have commented here, they are neither the be-all and end-all of democracy, nor singularly definitional of it. If we reduce our framework to elections as the unique characteristic of democracy, we are in serious trouble, as we can see form the processes and outcomes of democratic consolidation in the 1980s and 1990s in Latin America, where elected government did not, and has not since, dramatically improved the lives of most Latin Americans, despite bringing some important incremental gains and transformations, such as better respected political and civil rights.

In this context then, electoral observation can play a key role, but, as stressed by Patrick Berg, only if seen as part of a longer process. In this case, simply putting a tick in the box accounting for free and fair elections is not enough if we want political processes to impact realistically on the lives of ordinary people, and not just legitimise exclusionary party politics and political regimes.

We might have observed a clean process on the day, but what about what came before, how transparent and accountable was that process. How about party funding? How about the electoral laws in place? How about broader questions concerning access to ballot boxes and, significantly, unrestricted information? And what about what comes afterwards? How accountable are the newly elected politicians going to be, once the excitement and uproar ofthe elections is over?

In this regard, I have a deep concern relating to free and fair elections. Whilst, as we can see from the case of Guatemala and other Latin American republics, more people appear to be voting, and with more informed opinions, can an electoral process really be free and fair, when many millions of voters are illiterate? When their fundamental social and economic rights are violated systematically? When, due to poverty and exclusion, such voters may be left vulnerable to the unethical practices of local politicians, offering payments for votes? How free and fair can elections be then? Seen from the human development approach, the violation of one right necessarilyviolates and makes vulnerable other human rights.

In this regard, I would argue that of acute importance are national (not only international) electoal observation missions, where such processes precipitate local ownership of elections, political processes and voter education and consciousness. Prolonged national electoral observation missions can be important then, particularly if they work to ensure voter information, and the development of realistic political agendas, by linking in to broader voter education and monitoring initiatives that begin prior to the electoral campaign and continue after election day itself. 

This has been a really interesting dialogue for me so far, both in terms of the sharing and improving of comparative practitioner experience, and for my current academic research on democratization and human rights.

I wanted to pose a question, which is, for me, remaining to be a stone in my shoe. Many of us have stressed the importance of electoral observation, particularly as part of longer-term processes, signaled its possible dangers (legitimization of a dictatorship, amongst others), and indicated the significance of a clear and equal dialogue between local and national observers. My concern lies with the emphatic weight we all justifiably place upon elections as central to democracy, in short the critical importance of political and civil rights to democracy, an assertion that I am certainly in agreement with.

However, I am still struggling with how to reconcile the overarching supposition that political rights, in this case individual and universal rights,  represent the fundamental building blocks of democracy, particularly for countries such as Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia, where majority indigenous populations exist. Such countries have ratified International Labour Organisation Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, and are thus obliged to adhere to and implement the normative international framework relative to the individual, specific and collective rights of indigenous peoples. The rights consacrated in these instruments include the right to self-determiantion, political autonomy, and the right to exercise and protection of traditional authority structures and political authorities and forms of social organisation.

Cultural rights of indigenous peoples, which include specific rights relating to political participation and representation and broader fundamental and inalienable rights such as the right to land, are systematically violated in these countries, and we remain silent. However, at the first mention of an election, we all rush in to "observe".

In these contexts, broad electoral observation processes then have recently taken place, and in which I have participated. Violations of human rights, electoral law, international standards, are denounced and the international community places its tick or cross on the appropriate box. The country that adheres to these standards is thus an accepted member of the international community and, more often than not, consequently accepted to participate in the global (political) economy. How, if at all, can we justify or reconcile the contradiction that some political rights are "observable" and "denounceable" (those individual and universal human rights), whilst others are less so (as Orwell said, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others: all human rights then are equal, but some are more equal than others?)?

Clearly, the international human rights system should play a key role
through mechanisms, treaty bodies, reporting, monitoring here. At times
it does, at times it quite clearly doesn´t, for reasons we all know
very well. Maybe there is a sovereignty issue at stake here? It appears that it is not the work of electoral observation missions to observe these other violations of human rights. What, however, do we do about this? The fundamental question then for me becomes to what degree are we exporting, sanctioning and legitimizing a system through our electoral observation missions? This does not mean they should not take place, of course they should. Do we care less about cultural and social rights than political and civil rights, when clearly all rights are indivisible and integral in their enjoyment, exercise and protecion.

Just some doubts.

Like this example from Kenya shows, the use of mobile technology can not only speed up the transfer and publication about probems with the electoral process, but by lowering the threshold for individuals to get involved to simply sending a text message, also get more citizens engaged in the electoral process. The next step after colllecting data is of course how to use it to improve the electoral process. Evans, can you elaborate a bit on the follow-up to the information posted onb the website you mentioned? If it is till online, maybe you could also share the link with us.

One other interesting comes from the Maledives: For the fist multi-candidate Preseidential elections in the history of the country last year, the NGO Transparency Maldives launched a nation-wide information campaign, coupled with a participatory assessment of the electoral system - involving community members, NGOs, political parties and the media. As part of their later election observation mission, they offered an election complaint database on their website. Information posted here not only contributed to the overall assessment of the observation mission, but was also passed and properly lodged as a complaint with the authoritie. I believe this is a helpfl tool, as many people either do not know the proper channels for making complaints or find it too cumbersome (i.e. if travel to te next larger city is involved) or may even be afraid to do so themselves.

Last couple of days I was travelling in the regions and as had limited access to the internet, I was not able to actively participate in the discussions. I'll do my best to catch up during the remaining days.

Thank you for the quesiton Kristin. From the perspective of Domestic Election Monitoring organization, it is very easy to decide whether to observe the elections or not. I guess the answer on your question will be different from the perspectives of the International Monitoring Organization. For ISFED basically we know that untill the election processes in Georgia become fully free and fair we have to observe. For us the main issue is the funding, (it depends on the importance of the elections usually local elections are not as interesting for the donor community as the Presidential or Parliamentary ones are),  and after if we are not able to secure the full covaradge of the polling stations, meaning deploy 3500 observers, (this is the 100% of polling stations in Georgia) then we use two main approaches: 1. we do the random selection of the polling sttaions and 2. based on the experience we know and have identified the problematic polling stations (military, penitentiary, other ) these are the places where we deploy our observers. 

I hope I managed to answer your question at least partially because as I understand some parts of the question relate to the international obervation mission

- Eka Siradze-Delaunay -

Susan Atwood, Instructor, University of Minnesota’s Leadership : Leadership for Global Citizenship.

On the issue of legitimizing a dictator: this seems to me to lead into the question posed by New tactics of WHEN to monitor an election. It would be interesting to share existing checklists of the preconditions necessary for a given organization to monitor. Clearly, in a one party dictatorship election monitoring makes no sense. In a case where an embryonic multi party system is emerging it may make sense if the pre-election playing field is reasonably level in terms of media, financing, independent judiciary etc. I would be interested to know of examples where an organization has carried out a pre-election assessment and then decided NOT to monitor on election day and what process was followed in these cases - statements outlining the reasons for non-participation etc.

Another issue: does it always make sense to have both domestic and international observers monitoring - in some cases in Eastern Europe for instance, it was detrimental to local political parties to be associated with "foreigners" (Serbia).. Are there examples where it was more effective to have only international monitors, and why?,  

And, finally, since I was last involved in election monitoring in the 90s, has any progress been made on coordination, both between different international monitoring groups and with domestic monitoring groups?!

Following the December 2002 transition elections, Kenyans elected a democratic and just government attributed to a free and fair process. The participation of both local and international observers. However, these democratic
achievement did not last for long. The National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) disintergrated and two factions emerged one led by Mwai Kibaki and another led by Raila Odinga. Later the Orange Democratic Movement was formed. Politically, coalition politics have become part of the democratic process in Kenya. Unfortunately, with over 200 political parties registered, most of them operated as cash traps used by politicians to distabilizing the voting patterns..

These trend has led to the enactment of the Political Parties bill which controls the number of political parties inorder to authorize political party funding.

The bill attracted a parliamentary majority and was passed with little opposition.

However, institutionalized corruption through party politics has been evident in the past and there has been pressure to ensure accountability and transparency in funding of political parties. On the other hand, the current trend of political parties relying on their own election bureaues for monitoring the out come of elections set the stage for a conflict in the way elections have been observed in Kenya.

In Kenya for example, each political party in the Decemebr 2007 elections, had its own election officers who acted as observers and participated in sending the results from polling stations to the party headquaters. The ElectoralCommision of Kenya (ECK) also had a number of oficers at the polling station to supevise the voting process. However, at the close of the vote there was total mess that led to violence. None of the groups involved in the monitring process was able to predict the violence.

Fore instance, in 2005, when the government lost a referendum, the vote was discribed by observers as free and fair. However, this process was marred by allegations of abuse of office-apractise that has been perfected by the incumbent. Often government has been accused of using public resources for campaign despite the issues being raised by a number of observers.

Where the government contols access  for election observers to monitor elections, the trend has favoured international observers against local observers who are often subjected to intimidation and are also exposed to violence since in most case, they are also voters in their own rights.

The lack of an independent eletion monitoring body has been attributed mostly due to lack of funding and the capacity to mobilize resources from within, hence, compromising the credibility and independence of election monitoring by domestic observers.

Its important to address the likely conflict that arises from funding of political parties and monitoring of a free and fair elections without compromising the process.

Kwami and Eka both offer good advice on making results public. 

If the issue is literally making the results of voting available to the public, there are a few sub-issues.

The standard practice in elections is to require that ballot boxes be opened at polling stations in the presence of political party and candidate agents (sometimes called poll watchers or other names) and nonpartisan observers, that the ballots be opened in view of these monitors so that they can witness whether each ballot is valid and for whom it is marked and so that they can witness whether the tally is then accurately entered onto official tally sheets.  The emerging standard practice is to then provide official copies of the tally sheets to the partisan and nonpartisan monitors and to post one publically, so that citizens can see the results of the polling station and monitors and media can verify results.

The tabulation process at centers that receive polling station results follow analogous procedures up the line to the central authority (legislative district, central election commission for presidential elections, etc.).  This should include releasing immediately to the electoral contestants, nonpartisan monitors and the public tally sheets that show both the aggregated results and the results polling-station-by-polling station.  This allows monitors, media and others to return to polling stations and verify entries against the posted tally sheets, if the contestant, monitoring group or media do not have official copies issued at all of the stations.

Election commissions also should enter this data on a web site and make it availabel online.  There are credible arguments for posting publically voting data as it is registered by the authorities and credible arguments for holding the information until all or large portions are available in order to avoid unfounded expectations based on favorable early results that can be reversed over the natural course of the tabulation process.

News media can collect data at polling station, district or national levels and report responsibily as long as they make clear that shortcomings of incomplete results should be understood.

Nonpartisan domestic election monitoring organizations can carefully undertake collecting results from a statistical sample of polling stations and prepare highly accurate projections of voting results, as long as they also are present all day in the polling station to analyze whether the results are "clean" or contaminated by ballot box stuffing or other manipulations.  Without such "qualitative" observation and analysis, simply reporting projections based on a sample of polling station tallies could legitimize fraud.  These exercises, usually referred to as parallel vote tabulations (PVTs) or quick counts, can include very rapid reporting systems (SMS and other means depending on the national conditions) and can be publicized widely to reach citizens at local levels, as well as the Election Commission, party leaders and others.  (A handbook about conducting such quick counts can be found in the elections section at www.ndi.org.) 

Such monitoring deters fraud and provides a basis for the warranted degree of public confidence in official results tabulation.  PVTs can help stablilize potentally volatile circumstances, as was the very recent case in Ghana and in the Montenegrin independence referendum.  They also can expose fraud, as was the case in Georgia's 2003 parliamentary elections.

Whether or not nonpartisan monitors, the media or others conduct PVTs, the immediate release and publicity about election results is central to building public confidence in elections.  Withholding information concerning results causes suspicion, raises the potential for political violence and undermines confidence in elections. 

---Pat Merloe---

As it was mentioned by colleagues, international monitoring is no less important than domestic monitoring, and they are mutually reinforcing to create the objective picture of election’s conduct. International observers are usually equipped with tested methodology, previous training and often also considerable experience of other missions. However, there are some organizations acting like “spoilers” in the process of international election monitoring. I mostly know about the elections on the post-Soviet space, which is characterized by the domination of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes (except Baltic states and new democracies such as Georgia and Ukraine). In most cases the recent elections in those countries were observed by the European observation missions, where the core role was played by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), and by the observation mission of the CIS (Community of Independent States), with the heavy domination of Russian observers within it. The exception was the presidential election in Russia in 2008, where the OSCE mission refused to come, because 50 long-term observers from the OSCE had not been allowed to start working in Russia on February 15 (while the elections took place on March 2). In other cases OSCE observers were present.

Most of the recent elections on the post-Soviet space (for example, Belarus, Azerbaijan in 2008) were identified by international observation mission as not meeting, or only partly meeting international standards. However, the monitoring mission of the CIS usually used to give a fundamentally different assessment, namely, that the elections were free and fair. This happened because Russia had close economic and political cooperation with those authoritarian regimes where elections were held, and was interested in prolonging the rule of friendly regimes.

I wonder if there are other examples when international observation was biased for some reasons.

I believe that coordination of NGOs in the process of election monitoring is very important, especially in big countries. For the presidential elections in Ukraine in 2004 (which were marred by serious election fraud, and were followed by the protests known as the Orange Revolution), there were two big coalitions of non-governmental organizations: Freedom of Choice Coalition, which has existed since 2002 and united around 100 NGOs, and New Choice Coalition, which has been formed particularly for that election. Similarly to Georgia, the NGOs that were members of those coalitions monitored different aspects and components of election campaign: campaign funding, media coverage, voter lists (this was very important since we don’t yet have a single state register of voters), and last but not least voting and vote counting. There have been a number of forums and meetings of NGOs in the run-up of elections when they had an opportunity to coordinate efforts and to share their experience. In my opinion, it was crucial for the success of election monitoring efforts to have nation-wide coalitions of NGOs, since Ukraine is a big country in terms of area, and one NGO, even all-Ukrainian NGO, could not be able to make effective monitoring across the whole country.

Yes, the Ghana example is a very important model for such co-ordination and collaboration which worked very successful

go to http://www.codeogh.org to read more about coalition of Domestic Observers(CODEO)

The Coalition of Domestic Election
Observers (CODEO) is a federation of thirty-four independent,
non-partisan civil society organizations united to safeguard the rights
of Ghanaian citizens by promoting free, fair, transparent and peaceful
elections. CODEO has observed every election in Ghana since 2000 and is
the largest and most respected election observation coalition in Ghana.

Under the Co-chairmanship of Justice V.C.R.A.C Crabbe, a retired
Supreme Court Judge, and Professor Miranda Greenstreet, a former
Director of the University of Ghana's Institute of Adult Education,
CODEO has been at the forefront of building and consolidating credible
electoral system in Ghana. 

cheers
kwami
www.africanelections.org

<div>Domestic Observation of election an important exercise</div>
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<div>Ladies and gentlemen allow me to say that the principle of observing as opposed to monitoring of election by local is highly important in all circumstances,wether elections in a war torn country or a country reeling under dictatorship.</div>

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<div>In Zimbabwe civic bodies and the church organised themselves to monitor elections since 1995.It clear that politicians do have direct interest in elections hence promulgate laws that suits their agend amass power,or rather stay in power whereas the civic society are principled and are moved by values such as intergrity,courage,transparency.</div>

<div> </div>
<div>Election observation curtails electoral fraud and irregularities before and after counting before results are announced thereby augumenting evidence in cases where contestants seek legal recourse.</div>
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<div>Paralell information tabulation and data gathering restricts electoral mal-practices.In Zimbabwe it became evident that there is massive rigging of presidential results of 29 March Harmonised election after a delay in announcing results as well as different results posting by different electoral participants.</div>

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<div>One electoral board can not manage an election without creating avenues for rigging during delimitation of constituence boundaries and during polls.Different players in an election should be allowed to do their work.From civic education on the importance of voting,to the actual casting of a ballot.</div>

<div> </div>
<div>Admire Zaya </div>
<div>The Coordinator</div>
<div>Build A Better Youth Zimbabwe</div>
<div>96 Central Avenue</div>
<div>Harare</div>
<div>+263912973294<br><br><a href="mailto:admirezaya@justice.com">admirezaya@justice.com</a></div>