It is important that the EMB first and foremost identify and profile its stakeholders and determine their stake in the electoral process. How much attention needs to be paid to any stakeholder will depend on the level of interest a stakeholder has in the electoral process, combined with the level of influence or power the stakeholder can exert on the EMB. The combined power, influence, and interest of a stakeholder can be referred to as the stakeholder value to the EMB’s policies and practices.

An EMB’s strategy for dealing with each individual stakeholder will also be guided by the attitude of each stakeholder towards the EMB.

For example, if a stakeholder is supportive of the EMB’s policies and practices, the EMB may find it useful to involve it in many of its activities as possible, though this would not be appropriate where stakeholder involvement could damage an EMB’s independence of action. If a stakeholder is marginal, and has little influence on EMB policies, the EMB needs to monitor it and keep it informed of the EMB’s activities, but may not need to invest too much effort to involve it. Where the EMB identifies a wholly unsupportive stakeholder, it will need to analyse that stakeholder’s potential intentions and reactions to EMB activities and develop an appropriate defence strategy.

Once the EMB has identified and profiled each stakeholder, it should design and develop an appropriate strategy for promoting sound relations with each stakeholder group, based on the level of the stakeholder value. The degree to which a particular stakeholder’s loyalty and support - or lack of it - will affect the EMB operations will affect the nature and magnitude of the EMB’s effort to win and maintain this stakeholder’s loyalty and support.

For example, political parties in general are high interest/high power stakeholders in elections. If a significant political party rejects an election’s result due to its distrust in the way the election was conducted by the EMB, the EMB may come under attack – let alone the potential ensuing disruption of society. Thus, the relationship with political parties is an important one for the EMB to take very seriously, and invest considerable effort to win their trust and support. On the other hand, the EMB may not need to be so focused on its relationships with low interest/low power stakeholders with a peripheral interest in its activities. Unemployed youth are a stakeholder group as they could potentially be employed by the EMB as temporary staff, and may accuse the EMB of lack of social awareness if the EMB draws its additional staff from the ranks of the already employed, such as civil servants. However the lesser influence of the unemployed, and the time-limited nature of the EMB’s potential interaction with them, means that the EMB need not invest the same continuous effort into its relationship with them, as with higher interest/higher influence stakeholders.