Elections in post-conflict environments often have to deal with substantial numbers of refugees and displaced persons, in situations where different antagonistic communities within a country have become politically or geographically polarized. The location where refugees and displaced persons should be registered to vote, and in the case of refugees from another country, whether they can vote in elections in their current host country, is a matter for the voter registration and the legal framework.
This issue is likely to generate considerable political debate which may affect voting operations planning timetables. Organising actual voting facilities for refugees can be a major voting operations planning issue and have a substantial impact on voting site locations and staffing requirements, materials production, security needs, and overall voting operations costs.
Location Where Registered to Vote
If displaced persons within a country must re-register to vote where they are currently living, the effects on voting operations are relatively manageable. There will be changes in voter numbers and locations of voting stations; special assistance with language and voter transport may need to be provided; and the siting and securing of adequate voting stations in displaced persons’ camps may require additional planning and resourcing efforts.
Where major organizational issues occur usually is when such voters must remain registered at their former (and perhaps future) residence. A determination will have to be made whether these people should have to return to the area in which they are registered to vote or whether special voting facilities will be provided at their current locations.
There are a number of considerations to be taken into account, including:
- The number and proportion of the total voting population represented by refugees and displaced persons and whether these potential voters are a significant proportion of any particular national, ethnic or religious community in the country: This may require a judgment to be made of the effect on perceptions of election validity, and the country's future stability, of not providing every possible facility for them to vote. Normal cost-effectiveness considerations may not apply;
- Logistical requirements of the alternatives. Forcing refugees or displaced persons to return to their area of registration to vote may necessitate providing them with transport to voting stations. This will not only involve an intensive planning effort and organization of the voters by the electoral management body in coordination with other agencies, but must be assessed against the adequacy, security and costs of transport capacities (available vehicles and infrastructure) within the country.
- Security requirements. Transporting refugees or displaced persons back to their area of registration to vote is likely to be returning them to locations from which they were forcibly ejected by currently resident hostile forces. Intense security will be required at all voting stations at which they are voting. Their transport to and from the voting stations is also likely to require heavily-secured convoys, complex in organization, as they will be delivering voters to multiple voting points. Both the joint capabilities of local and any available international security forces to provide such levels of security, and the reliability of local security forces in such situations, must be carefully assessed;
- The experience and capacity of election administrators and voting station staff. If there is no prior experience in managing elections that allow absentee voting, the challenge of providing these facilities satisfactorily at first attempt in a tense post-conflict environment may be difficult.
- The additional organisational costs of providing voting sites and developing materials for absentee voting by refugee and displaced persons can be daunting.
There is rarely an ideal solution in such situations. Returning to the former place of residence to vote is the less complex solution, administratively, but can only occur if security and logistical capacities are adequate to enable participation and for the voting to be considered free and fair.
Use of Absentee Voting
If absentee voting stations are set up for refugees or displaced persons in their current area of residence, there will be a number of administrative requirements, including:
Providing special voters registers for these persons, preferably organized geographically by their current location, and identifying the electoral district for which they may vote. To guard against possible impersonation, there would preferably be verification checks to ensure that persons on these registers do not also appear on voters lists being used in the area of their former residence.
Sufficient special voting stations should be established for refugee or displaced person voting, staffed with experienced personnel who are, if at all possible, from their own community.
These voting stations will need to be supplied with sufficient voting material from each of the electoral districts in which the refugees or displaced persons are registered to vote. It may be easier to organize these as pre-packaged absentee voting material kits for each voter. In some jurisdictions, these kits are made up and individually labeled for each potential voter. While more expensive in production, this can considerably reduce errors in issuing ballots in the voting station. Spare, unlabelled packs to be used to replace incorrectly issued materials or allow re-issue in case of voter error should also be provided for all electoral districts.
Special security and logistical arrangements may need to be made so that all party or candidate representatives and independent observers are free to monitor these voting stations.
Reliable and secure communications for transmitting counting results from these stations are also required.
The count and count result transmission processes will require intensive integrity checks. Counts from these voting stations will need to be amalgamated with counts from voting stations within the displaced persons' former areas of residence. All political participants and independent observers must be free to monitor these functions.
Refugees
For refugees all of the above issues need to be considered particularly carefully. Arranging for them to lodge absentee votes in their current country of residence may require agreements with relevant governments. Bringing them back from another country to vote will involve international transportation and security issues.
Internationally-supervised voting stations in the areas in which they now live in other countries may be required for overall election outcomes to be regarded as valid.
