Logistics planning is the essential support functioning for ensuring that equipment, staff, and communications methods are in place in time for the successful conduct of voting.
Logistics planning has to be flexible and thorough in its consideration of possible contingency arrangements. Logistics has to ensure delivery from suppliers to meet an election calendar that stipulates unalterable dates.
Distribution
Effective distribution of materials and equipment requires:
- detailed planning of delivery and retrieval schedules, methods of transport to be used and shipping routes
- efficient means of splitting bulk deliveries of supplies into separate shipments for each voting location, avoiding wastage, yet ensuring that all voting stations have sufficient supplies to service the voters
- adequate security for the specific environment
- storage appropriate for maintaining stocks for election materials and equipment in good condition
- comprehensive tracking of the movements of all election materials and equipment as they go through the distribution and return chain
Both accountability and probity considerations, as well as operational needs to be informed initially about the state of readiness for voting, and later of the successful retrieval of supplies, are served by carefully tracking all shipping and distribution of supplies.
Staff Support
Transportation may be required for voting station officials to attend and return from their voting stations. These may be officials who need to be mobile due to the nature of their duties, such as those assigned to mobile voting stations or as roving voting station supervisors. They may be staff from normal voting stations who, due to the unavailablitly of other reliable transportation services, considerations of personal safety or remoteness of their assigned station, would not otherwise be able to attend to their duties.
Communications
The extent and intensity of communications during the election period requires that a through assessment be made of communication needs. Apart from the heightened flow of information within the electoral management body's offices and the need to provide facilities for communication with voters, political parties, security forces, and other government agencies, there will be a large number of dispersed voting sites that will need to be in communication with electoral district managers' offices.
Effective communications methods for these voting station will need to take account of voting stations' communications requirements-for security, procedural advice, progress reporting and (where relevant) count results- in relation to the available communications infrastructure.
Party and candidate agents
The electoral management body may be required to assist parties and candidates in the logistics of deploying their representatives. This may require providing lists of voting stations to the parties and candidates as well as the routes of mobile voting stations and the departing times of electoral officials who are conducting special votes away from voting stations.
Observers
Independent observers, particularly if they are participating in international observer mission in a country with which they are not familiar , will require carefully planned logistical support.
Image:
UNMIT Prepares for Second Village Elections in Timor-Leste by United Nations Photo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License.
