The Sustainability of EMBs

Despite the axiom that 'you can't put a price on democracy', making democratic elections more sustainable is a principle to be embraced by all EMBs. The need for cost reductions in elections results from the rising costs of election goods and services - including the use of new technologies, dwindling public sector budgets, the increasing frequency of elections for different levels of political institutions, and also the tough competition among poorer countries to access international donor funding. The euphoria surrounding a successful, well-funded transitional election needs to be tempered by the reality that similar levels of funding may not be available for future elections.

What is sustainability?

In the context of elections, sustainability refers to electoral policies and practices which are cost effective, realistic, and meet the needs of all stakeholders in the electoral processes, both now and in the future. Sustainability aims to minimize reliance on external inputs and resources. EMB sustainability is not only defined in financial terms; it includes the value of the social and political returns on its activities. For example, a post-conflict poor country may use expensive voting systems and procedures which, in economic terms, may not be sustainable, but in political terms may be essential in the short term to build trust among stakeholders and lasting peace and stability in the country. There are several elements to EMB sustainability:

1. An EMB has institutional sustainability if its structures and processes enable it to fulfil its mandate and responsibilities in the longer term – that is, over a series of elections. This type of sustainability refers to the adequacy of the electoral framework – the constitution, electoral law and regulations, and administrative and other policies – to enable the EMB to carry out its work in an effective and efficient manner.
2. An EMB has financial and economic sustainability if the nature and level of its funding and expenditure is adequate to fulfil its institutional mandate and responsibility.
3. An EMB has human resource sustainability if it is able to engage sufficient, appropriately skilled local staff to manage and implement its systems and procedures.
4. Other forms of EMB sustainability include socio-political and environmental factors, for example, the extent to which EMB policies and practices promote social equality and political inclusion, minimise conflict, and promote environmental sustainability.
   

Why is EMB sustainability important?

Gearing EMB policies and practices to promote sustainability helps the EMB enhance stakeholder confidence in the electoral process and in the EMB. For example, governments and donors want to see that the funds they appropriate to the EMB are used effectively, and that there is increasing capacity development within the EMB to reduce reliance on external interventions and inputs, especially donor support. Other stakeholders such as political parties and the general public also want to see sustainability of EMB policies and practices as a way to increase electoral integrity and political participation.

The challenge of sustainability is more pronounced among EMBs in emerging democracies, which often rely heavily on donor aid. Economic and political hardships may prevent these countries from being able to fund wholly their own elections. In transitional elections, high integrity costs relating to confidence-building processes such as peace-keeping, voter education and information, and election observation and monitoring, may be financially unsustainable, and are often funded through donor aid.

A high level of international assistance for second and third elections in emerging democracies may not result in greater efficiency or effectiveness, even though many of the threats to the initial democratic transition may have receded. As the international political agenda moves on, reduced donor interest may mean that such funding is not even available.

Another immediate challenge has been the transfer of authority from international EMBs to fully local (national) EMBs, as in Cambodia and East Timor, and how best to ensure institutional sustainability of newly founded EMBs, as in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraq.

Needs assessment

The EMB’s sustainability can be addressed through a thorough needs assessment, by which a country informs itself of its current election management capabilities and the resources, financial, technological, and human resources necessary to organize and conduct free and fair elections. An assessment may be undertaken by the EMB itself, but may gain credibility if conducted by a private audit firm or an independent NGO. Donors also usually undertake needs assessments in planning assistance programmes.

A needs assessment can be used to identify EMB sustainability at three levels: system, organisational, and individual. It is normally based on an expert analysis of the electoral environment, and identifies and considers strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

A system level needs assessment covers the broader issues of the legal and institutional environments in which elections take place, in order to determine the extent to which they help or hinder EMB sustainability. It includes a review of all parts of the legal and policy framework relevant to elections, and the EMBs functions and stakeholder relationships derived from these. The primary legal instruments to be reviewed are the constitution, laws dealing directly with electoral processes, and their subsidiary regulations and administrative policies. The assessment may need to cover parts of the legal framework that are indirectly relevant, such as public sector employment laws or polices, or government procurement rules and practices. It may also address the EMB’s linkages and relationship with other bodies, such as the host ministry of a Governmental Model EMB, government ministries which render financial and logistical support to the EMB, and local and international associations and bodies which serve as EMB networks of support and resource sharing.

At the organisational level, a needs assessment looks at the EMB’s strategies and management culture, and considers its processes of planning, policy-making and implementation; management structure; division of roles and responsibilities; communication and cooperation; and standards for financial reporting and staff performance. It helps the EMB calculate the amount of resources required to organize the conduct of any specific electoral event. The EMB can then work out what portion of the amount needed can be met from the national budget and how much, if any, would be needed from other sources. The assessment may also examine the nature and level of technical assistance required.

At the individual level, a needs assessment covers issues such as staff competence, available opportunities for staff development, and staff loyalty to the EMB’s objectives and mission.

Where there is a record of credible needs assessment reports over a period, a comprehensive picture of the ability of the EMB’s capacity begins to emerge, and it can be more accurately evaluated in terms of sustainability.

Electoral sustainability and donor support

Donor support may improve the quality of an election, and in some cases may even be necessary for it occur. However, for many EMBs, donor support has implications for the sustainable delivery of free and fair elections – see the case studies of Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Fiji, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Yemen.

While donor support may include budgetary contributions and technical assistance, including advanced technologies, some donors avoid supporting EMBs’ recurrent budgets, that is, core personnel costs and rental of buildings and furniture, as well as other non-technical items, such as motor vehicles and fuel. Donor assistance sometimes is accompanied by a tied aid concept whereby the recipient EMB is required to purchase goods and services from nationals of the donor concerned. Often the costs of purchasing from external vendors may be considerably higher, inflating overall electoral costs. New technologies may have significant long-term cost implications for the EMB, for example for maintenance or payment of regular licencing fees for software. Introducing donor-driven technological solutions may create political demands for progressively greater dependence on externally provided technology, as experienced with voter registration in Haiti.

In some post-conflict situations such as those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, and Liberia, donors contribute almost the entire cost of the transitional elections. In such cases, subsequent elections are unable to achieve the same level of funding and will offer a lower level of election services, which may lead to dissatisfaction with those subsequent elections. This raises obvious issues of creating transitional structures that the local authorities can ‘buy into’ subsequently, and building the necessary expertise to generate the financial resources to conduct future elections. In other post-conflict situations, outside support may be vital, but it may not be politically or economically desirable for outside authorities to assume ownership of organizing and conducting the transitional elections: Afghanistan and Iraq may fall into this category. Failed states and failed EMBs may also require considerable outside assistance from various donors; sometimes the UN plays a coordinating role, as in Liberia in 2004–2005.

The CORE study from 2005 notes that Cambodia, which in 1993 relied on donor assistance for up to 80 per cent of its election budget, has reduced its donor dependence to less than 50 per cent during the 2003 elections. Although it is desirable to transfer skills to local election officials during the transitional election period, in practice this goal has seldom been satisfactorily achieved, so capacity-building is likely to be a continuing need in post-transitional elections. In post-conflict environments, the initial external assistance is vital to restore democracy and stability, but unless considerable donor assistance continues in the medium term, to continue to develop EMB capabilities, both the electoral process and democracy itself may experience reverses.

New technologies can help to improve the quality of electoral processes, especially where large amounts of data have to be processed quickly, as in delimitation of electoral districts, electoral registration, the voting and vote-counting process, and the general computerization of the administrative machinery. An increasing number of EMBs are entering the field of electronic voting and counting of votes. Even some self-sustaining EMBs, for example in Costa Rica, find it necessary to rely on outside assistance to fund the introduction of new technology (see the case study). Opinions are divided on the question of the sustainability of funding voting computerization, Internet and telecommunication services, and other electoral technology such as scanners and biometrics for voter registration. Aspects to be considered by EMBs and donors include:

1. the comparative financial, social, and political costs/benefits of using donor assistance for funding new technology as against using it for other electoral assistance programmes;
2. the life of the technology: will the equipment require similarly expensive replacement at the next electoral event or will it be useful in years and elections to come;
3. capacities for local maintenance of the technology. If there is no technical or financial capacity to maintain the internationally provided hardware or software, or skills transferred to allow local operation once the international advisers have gone, internationally provided technology can be a very expensive single-use solution;
4. the potential for making the technology available for use by other government or societal organisations after the electoral event; or even loaning it to other countries for their elections; and
5. training for temporary electoral staff using internationally provided technology that can be transferred to their post-electoral work environments.
   

Practices favouring sustainability

Cost-effectiveness – providing an effective service for the lowest possible cost – is the major yardstick for sustainability, rather than purely lowest cost. Savings cannot compromise the basic requirements of legitimate elections. A particular measure to reduce electoral costs may work well in one country but not in another because of differing legal, political, and socio-economic circumstances. Although the practice of having a single-member EMB is a useful cost-saving measure, in India it was rebuffed by the Supreme Court as not conducive to fair decision making, thus paving the way for the appointment of a three-member EMB in 1995. It is not therefore possible to prescribe commonly applicable sustainability solutions, only general principles.

EMB core budgets may be reduced by rationalising structures, for example the number of EMB members or secretariat positions. The EMBs in Cambodia and South Africa undertook rationalization exercises during 1999 and 2002, respectively. The maintenance of only a small core of permanent staff, backed by well-trained temporary field staff, can reduce costs, while maintaining efficiency. For smaller EMBs, that of Fiji shows that core election staff can be kept to a minimum and remain functional. However, the loss of experienced staff can have a very negative effect on the EMB’s performance. Finding a successful balance is not easy.

Significant budgetary savings can be achieved in Governmental Model EMBs or other model EMBs where public servants or volunteers can be co-opted to serve with the EMB during an election period. While assisting financial sustainability, this type of staffing profile can also have a negative effect on the performance of and public trust in the EMB, and thus the political sustainability of the electoral process. EMB membership and staffing structures and costs are a significant issue in developing a viable strategy to sustain the delivery of free and fair elections. There are management tools, such as task profiling, that the EMB can use to determine the minimum staff numbers it needs to perform its functions. The EMB would then be required to justify the employment of additional staff on efficiency or effectiveness grounds.Significant cost savings can be achieved by holding elections for all levels of representation on the one day. However the marked political effects of having either simultaneous or staggered elections means that political sustainability arguments may outweigh financial ones.

Staffing for Sustainability

Staffing can be a significant proportion of an EMB’s costs, but also represent the EMB’s greatest asset. EMB core budgets may be reduced by rationalising structures, for example the number of EMB members or secretariat positions. The EMBs in Cambodia and South Africa undertook rationalization exercises during 1999 and 2002, respectively. The maintenance of only a small core of permanent staff, backed by well-trained temporary field staff, can reduce costs, while maintaining efficiency. For smaller EMBs, that of Fiji shows that core election staff can be kept to a minimum and remain functional. There are management tools, such as task profiling, that the EMB can use to determine the minimum staff numbers it needs to perform its functions. The EMB would then be required to justify the employment of additional staff on efficiency or effectiveness grounds. Use of temporary, rather than permanent, EMBs, can also assist financial sustainability.

However, the political and operational sustainability of using personnel measures to promote financial sustainability must be carefully considered. For example, significant budgetary savings can be achieved in Governmental Model EMBs, or other model EMBs where public servants or volunteers can be co-opted to serve with the EMB (as in India) during an election period. While assisting financial sustainability, this type of staffing profile can also have a negative effect on the performance of and public trust in the EMB, and thus the political sustainability of the electoral process. Finding a successful balance may not be easy.

Inability to retain sufficient experienced staff can have a negative effect on the EMB’s sustainability. Experienced staff, including temporary polling station staff, hold the institutional memory of the EMB – the knowledge of what has and has not worked, the experience to pass on to new staff and to other stakeholders. Staff retention requires active planning by the EMB, using measures such as reward schemes, professional training, and development programs and opportunities for promotion. Staff succession planning, including mentoring of more junior staff, exit debriefings for departing staff, and systematic, combined with accessible archiving of electoral records, will assist the EMB operate sustainably when key staff leave.

Electoral Materials

Sound materials design, procurement, and management policies are based on rigorous needs analysis and thus contribute to the sustainability of an EMB’s operations. Before procuring materials, EMBs need to determine the most suitable options, after investigating issues including:

1. need – considering what benefit the desired materials add to electoral processes;
2. local or international sourcing – considering issues such as cost, control, production lead time, quality, certainty of delivery, maintenance, and substitutability;
3. quality – considering issues such as cost, conditions under which being used, ability to support integrity standards, and requirements for durability;
4. single or multiple use – considering issues such as storage and production costs, environmental impacts including disposal and recycling methods, and opportunities for use by other organisations;
5. complexity – considering issues such as knowledge levels of users, training requirements, and maintenance capacities;
6. quantity – considering issues such as unit costs, production lead time, storage requirements, and needs for reserves;
7. distribution - considering issues such as costs and distribution time/scheduling;
8. storage and archiving requirements – considering issues such as cost, accessibility, centralised or decentralised warehousing, asset protection measures, and deterioration rate; and
9. disposal – considering issues such as environmental impacts, end-life value, and security requirements.
   
   

EMBs have community responsibilities to consider - not just the economic sustainability of materials purchases, but the environmental and social impacts also. Life cycle analysis, which considers the ‘cradle-to-grave’ economic, environmental, and social costs and impacts of products, can assist the EMB to choose suitable electoral materials. This analysis assesses all material use impacts, not only those related to materials production, but also to issues such as re-use opportunities, impacts of storage and distribution over the materials’ whole life, and costs of environmentally sound disposal or opportunities for recycling.

Rigorous determination of whether types of materials are really needed, and maintaining tight control of the quantities produced, can assist financial sustainability. Countries such as Cambodia have cut costs significantly by not printing special voter ID cards. Tight audit controls on the printing of ballot papers and other accountable forms will also help to reduce costs.

Existing low-cost materials options may not be fully utilised in new and emerging democracies due to lack of public confidence in the EMB’s ability to ensure security and prevent fraud if they were used. For example, EMBs may have to print ballot papers abroad because opposition political parties object to the government printer or local private printers doing this work. On the other hand, Indonesian law requires local printing of ballot papers, the EMBs of Australia, Canada, and South Africa use low-cost materials for ballot boxes and voting booths, and Nicaragua uses locally produced ballot boxes, without adverse affects on ballot security. Use of such low-cost materials depends on the EMB implementing sound security management controls.

Many EMBs are reducing election costs by sharing resources such as ballot boxes, cameras, and voting booths. For example, the Ghana EMB lent ballot materials to other EMBs in its region during 2003 and 2004. The South African EMB has provided professional services and shared computer equipment with other EMBs on the African continent. Resource sharing can also take place between the EMB and other government agencies, such as ministries and municipal authorities, in areas such as transport, logistics, statistical data, and related professional services.

Experience in the 1990s in countries such as Cambodia and Indonesia has shown that post-election preservation of electoral materials and equipment (such as motor vehicles, mobile phones, computers, and ballot boxes) may be neglected, resulting in misappropriation or damage. Considerable losses to EMBs are incurred in this way, and the EMB may lose credibility with funders. Effective continuous asset management procedures can prevent this.

Structural and Technological Implications of Sustainability

Electoral Systems

Each type of electoral system raises different political, social, and financial sustainability issues. The type of electoral system used will have a critical impact on boundary delimitation and voter registration processes, voter education and information requirements, ballot paper design and production, the number of polling days, and the need for by-elections. These issues are examined in detail in the ES topic area. For example, systems based on small electoral districts, requiring specific boundary delimitation processes, separate ballot papers for each district, high precision in voter registration and electoral fraud prevention, and an EMB administrative structure that is capable of dealing with each electoral district as a distinctive unit, may be more costly. On the other hand, large multi-member electoral districts may involve complex and expensive vote-counting systems, may be unwieldy for an EMB to manage accurately and transparently, and may attract higher transport and other logistics costs. Proponents of each type of electoral system advance social and political sustainability arguments in their favour which need to be examined carefully against specific country conditions.

Electoral Boundary Delimitation

The frequency and form of electoral boundary delimitation processes may be reviewed to improve sustainability. Using the EMB to conduct boundary delimitation can eliminate the costs of a separate boundary delimitation body; on the other hand, if the government maintains a mapping office for other purposes, it may not be necessary for the EMB to duplicate that capability. Simple electronic mapping and population databases for determining electoral district boundaries, and streamlined review processes and periods, can be used to reduce costs. The adoption of multi-member electoral districts based on existing administrative boundaries can drastically reduce or even eliminate boundary delimitation costs. However boundary delimitation is a politically sensitive issue, and needs also to be implemented in a politically sustainable manner.

Voter Registration

The cost of compiling and maintaining the voters register can be significantly affected by the system used and its components. The method of data collection can have significant effects on both costs and accuracy – and hence political sustainability – of the voters register. For example, whether data is specifically collected for voter registration or extracted from an existing database; whether by continuous registration, or by a national census-style exercise before an election; whether passive (the EMB contacting voters) or active (voters having to contact the EMB); whether special voter ID cards are issued, or not; and what opportunities are provided for electors to challenge alleged inaccuracies on the voters register. The use of technology in voter registration - such as in recording elector identity data such as thumb prints and photographs, the use of bar coded documents, database matching to update registration records, or in the production of voters registers - will also have significant cost implications.

Maintaining accurate voter registers is a costly task. Each EMB needs to determine which voter registration checks are necessary, and which, given levels of public trust and polling fraud controls, may be redundant and can be eliminated, thus saving costs. Comparison of data on the voters register with information from other government agencies can assist in maintaining the voters register cost-effectively, although it may raise concerns over data privacy. If the electoral register can be derived from a reliable and politically acceptable national civil registration database, as in Senegal and Sweden, or if births and deaths records are computerised and accessible to the EMB, costs can be cut significantly. Continuous voter registration may, in the long run, be another measure to cut down costs.

The Polling Process

The preparation for and conduct of polling at a general election or referendum in any country is a significant national event, requiring a considerable budget to be implemented effectively. Careful assessment of how many polling stations, staff, and associated materials are necessary for each election can help reduce costs. If security, integrity, and effective service levels can be assured, polling stations in higher population density areas could be amalgamated, providing significant cost savings. Improved allocations of duties to staff, polling station layouts, and staff training may allow a decrease in the ratio of polling station staff to voters without reducing service levels. Countries which conduct polling over two days may also consider whether sufficient hours on a single day would cut costs. Any proposed reductions in voting days or hours need to be considered against patterns of working hours, so as not to exclude any class of electors from voting.

Improving voter access and extending common facilities to voters, such as postal voting (as in Australia and Spain), external voting, and the provision of special services for voting in prisons, ships, and hospitals, has obliged EMBs to offer relatively higher-cost services to electors. These activities, particularly if they involve large-scale absentee voting for refugees or others as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, and Iraq, may be a burden on the financial sustainability of electoral processes. Increases in election costs need, however, to be weighed against the EMB’s social responsibilities, and the additional political legitimacy gained through enabling these voters to use their franchise.

Training EMB staff can be expensive, and is often a cost that governments or EMBs see as a relatively painless cut when reviewing election budgets. Inadequate training is, however, likely to result in greater financial and political costs through poor staff performance - perhaps affecting the credibility of the electoral process - and have a long-term effect on the reputation and sustainability of the EMB.

Automated Voting and Counting Processes

There are a number of automated devices that are marketed as a means of improving voting methods and reducing costs, especially staffing costs. It is claimed that some of the machines offer a high degree of reliability and resistance to electoral malpractice. Many are now capable of providing audit trail facilities. These include electronic voting machines (EVMs) which have been used in countries such as Australia, Belgium, Brazil, the United States, and Venezuela over the last few years, and recently for the first time in the whole of India. Although no reliable cost-effectiveness analysis exists on the use of new technology for voting and the count, there is evidence that technology such as EVMs may reduce election costs over time, especially costs associated with the printing and storage of ballot papers and also the vote count. The use of optical mark reading (OMR) devices to count votes can also provide accuracy and time-effectiveness in the electoral process while still ensuring the existence of a paper ballot that can be physically examined if necessary in the course of post-election disputes.

It is important to weigh the use of new electoral technology against the level of public trust and confidence in the electoral process, to involve stakeholders in pilot testing new electronic systems, and to obtain major stakeholders’ agreement to the introduction of new technology. Due to the potential lack of transparency of electronic voting and counting, the use of EVMs may generate distrust among detractors who can argue that such technology can easily lend itself to manipulation. This is not surprising, given the security deficiencies, and omissions and errors in recording votes regularly reported in the use of DRE (direct-recording electronic, or touch screen) machines and other EVMs in the USA.

The accuracy and integrity of these machines is only as good as that of the companies and persons designing, programming, testing, and maintaining them. There are ways of introducing EVMs that can provide integrity, cost, and time benefits to the election process – provided that clear controls and accountability measures, such as regular audits and back-up systems, (see Accountability for the Use of Technology-based Systems), have been implemented.

It is not wise for a poor country to go high-tech while failing to feed and develop its own people. The use of electoral high technology such as digitized voter registration cards, computerised electoral registers, and electronic voting and counting should be weighed against other pressing national priorities such as health and education. Electoral technology may be more sustainable where it can be used for other continuing functions. Its introduction also needs to be considered not just against the immediate costs and alternative uses of funds, but future costs and human skills required for their maintenance. Assessing sustainability needs to consider the longer-term consequences.

The counting process is a prime target in many countries for automation and cost reduction, and many automated machines both record votes and tally them. Unless paper audit trails are recorded for each vote, transparency may be lacking in these automated counts. The counting process is considered to be a vulnerable part of an election, and always needs to be conducted in a transparent manner by well trained staff.

The requirement for openness at all stages of the counting and tabulation of votes may also limit the cost-saving measures that can be introduced into manual vote-counts. Stakeholders in the general election in Guyana in 1997 and the Union elections in Zanzibar (Tanzania) in 1995 and 2000 complained that events which took place during the tallying phase of the count adversely affected the election results and underlined the importance of transparency in the entire counting process. Both cases involved changes made by unknown persons to some of the count results subsequent to figures being issued from polling stations. Opposition parties in both instances believed that the interference did affect the outcome of the elections.

Summary: The Sustainability of EMBs

• There is continuous pressure on EMBs to increase their capacities and performance to promote effectiveness and efficiency.
• Sustainability refers to electoral policies and practices which are cost effective, realistic, and meet the needs of all stakeholders in the electoral processes, both now and in the future. It is a greater challenge in new and emerging democracies.
• EMBs need to aim for financial and economic, institutional, socio-political, and environmental sustainability in their activities, to enhance stakeholder confidence in the electoral process and to ensure their own survival.
• System, organisational, and individual needs assessments can assist an EMB to identify sustainability issues.
• Especially in new and emerging democracies, donor support levels and commitment have a large impact on EMB sustainability. Donor support may have positive and negative affects. It may improve the quality of a specific election, but its influences and any dependency by the EMB on it may negatively affect the EMB’s sustainability.
• Donors have a responsibility to ensure that their support assists EMB sustainability, such as through coordination on EMB needs and support for skills transfer.
• New technologies are seductive to EMBs and often attractive to donors, but EMBs need to make objective decisions on their long-term usefulness and impacts on EMB sustainability. The extent to which new technologies are used by an EMB should be determined by the level of the country’s resource endowment and the benefits to be derived through their use.
• Aiming for sustainability has impacts on choices of electoral systems, and on frameworks and procedures for costly, complex, and integrity-demanding electoral processes such as boundary delimitation, voter registration, voting, and vote counting and tabulation. EMBs need to carefully consider the necessary levels of integrity required and technology used for these processes, and their effects on financial and socio-political sustainability.
• Human resources and their knowledge and experience are an EMB’s greatest asset. Investment in developing and retaining these, and in ensuring that institutional memory survives losses of experienced staff, is an essential ingredient in EMB sustainability.
• Effective materials design, procurement, and management policies, based on rigorous needs and cost-effectiveness analyses, and tools such as life cycle.