Particularly in emerging democracies, electoral legal frameworks are being designed to cover all electoral process matters relevant to the delivery of free and fair elections. This can have the advantage of promoting electoral integrity by ensuring that the EMB exercises controls that reflect its responsibility for the entire process. In many countries, the EMB is responsible for a wide range of activities throughout the electoral cycle.

Apart from the essential (or core) powers and functions of:

• determination of who is eligible to vote;
• determination of political parties and/or candidates eligible to contest an election;
• organisation and conduct of polling;
• counting of votes;
• aggregation of votes;

other EMB activities may include:

• making national or regional electoral policies;
• planning of electoral services;
• training of electoral staff;
• conduct of voter information/education and civic education;
• delimitation of electoral district boundaries;
• electoral logistics;
• identification and registration of voters;
• development and maintenance of a national voters register;
• registration of political parties;
• regulation of financing of political parties;
• political party pre-selections or primaries;
• regulation of the conduct of political parties and candidates;
• regulation of the conduct of the media during elections;
• regulation of opinion surveys;
• training of political parties’ and candidates’ poll watchers;
• accreditation and regulation of the conduct of election observers;
• announcement and certification of election results;
• adjudication of electoral disputes;
• reviews and evaluations of electoral framework adequacy and EMB performance.
• advising the government and legislature on electoral reform issues;
• participating in international electoral assistance services, including observation missions in neighbouring countries.