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- Info
Summary: The Legal Framework
- Electoral processes are complex, standardised activities requiring clear, simple, and relatively comprehensive legal definition to promote consistency, equity, and a common understanding of electoral frameworks by all electoral stakeholders.
- The electoral legal framework within which the EMB operates may be defined in many different types of instruments – including international treaties, the constitution, national and sub-national statute law, and EMB and other regulations
- International treaties and agreements provide a framework of norms within which a country’s electoral legal arrangements can be defined and assessed against.
- There is a trend towards defining key electoral issues in the constitution, as this may provide a workable means of entrenching electoral norms against ruling party manipulations. Electoral arrangements may be further defined in statute law and subsidiary law and regulations.
- Electoral statute law may be a single law, or multiple laws which need to be kept in harmony. EMBs or the executive branch of government may be able to make regulations filling in gaps in the law: usually these would be subject to some form of judicial or other review. EMBs may also be able to set their own administrative policies. For confidence in election processes, it is important that all parts of the electoral framework – treaties, constitution, statute laws, EMB and other regulations, and administrative polices – are freely and publicly available and that changes are discussed and shared with key stakeholders.
- A balance needs to be struck between providing for certainty and consistency in the legal framework, whilst allowing the EMB the flexibility to respond effectively to changing electoral circumstances. The amount of electoral detail in higher level instruments – constitutions and statute laws - will often depend on the level of trust in political participants and in the performance of the EMB.
- International IDEA’s publication International Electoral Standards: IDEA’s Guidelines for Reviewing the Legal Framework of Elections provides guidelines for assessment of electoral legal frameworks.
- EMB powers to make regulations should always be exercised in consistency with both the constitution and the electoral law.
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Electoral Management
