by Thérèse Pearce Laanela and Jeff Brady

In the 1990s, a whirlwind of democratization swept the world, producing a flurry of elections in long-time authoritarian countries in Eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere. In these nascent democracies, newly minted electoral policymakers and administrators had to start from scratch as they wrote legislation, procedures and manuals to get their countries’ first elections off the ground. Faced with short time frames and incredibly high political stakes, international electoral advisors and indigenous election officials had to rely on manuals from other democracies, usually sent through slow postal services or faxed through unreliable telephone services. 

As frustrations grew, a team of election practitioners came up with an idea to support these election pioneers with a tool that could categorize the existing knowledge from around the globe about democratic elections—and make it readily available on the Internet. In 1998, a partnership composed of International IDEA, UN-DESA and IFES (with funding from USAID)—released the Administration and Cost of Elections (ACE) Project. ACE became one of the most valued and best-known international depositories of knowledge on managing elections, focused on the administrative and cost implications of the choices available.

With more than 2.4 million annual visitors and wide acclaim, the ACE project has provided election professionals with critical information in over 700 elections worldwide. However, the original partners realized that ACE could be strengthened by drawing on the expertise of the thousands of election professionals that now existed. To that end, new partners joined on and a new idea emerged: the ACE project is now the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, a series of new informational products brought together in one portal that aims to provide a ready environment for professionals to generate, share and apply knowledge on managing elections and, ultimately, offer capacity development services.

A Unique Partnership Approach

In 2004, the founding partners—along with Elections Canada, the Electoral Institute of South Africa’s EISA, Mexico’s IFE and the UNDP—reviewed the ACE Project’s overall vision and sought out the collaboration of associate members, such as universities and regional/national electoral organizations. In February 2005, the University of Calgary became an associate member, helping to grow an ACE network that now includes vibrant relationships among more than a dozen international organizations (i.e., the ACE partners, the University of Calgary and 10 regional associations and local civil society organizations).

Commitment to Community: Election Administration as a Profession

The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network is driven by a fundamental belief that election administration should be seen as a profession in its own right, requiring specialized knowledge and practical experience. Given this aim, the intended outcomes of the 2006 ACE Electoral Knowledge Network are: 

• Enhanced knowledge services that promote a ready environment for election professionals to exchange information, solve problems and build a common language, methods and models around specific competencies; and
• Improved professionalism of those engaged in electoral activities, stressing the tools needed to ensure credible, sustainable, peaceful and cost-effective elections.

Enhancing Knowledge Services

To create an environment for information exchange, the partners expanded, updated and improved the core content of the ACE Project. The result is a comprehensive and authoritative collection of highly readable, informative and practical documents covering management approaches, alternative methods, cost considerations and policy issues in electoral administration.

Second, ACE added new features to improve the user’s experience, including: 

• Direct and system-wide links with the Election Process Information Collection (EPIC) Project, providing updated comparative data on election systems, laws and management worldwide.
• Access to Election Resources Online, a comprehensive

and continuously updated collection of materials such as sample ballots, election posters and administrative manuals.

• A Focus On online article series that explores cross-cutting issues relevant to elections and democratic governance (produced three or four times yearly).
• Electoral Advice Online, a portal divided into three main sections: a help desk function, an archive of questions from users (with answers from experts) and a virtual meeting place where electoral experts can debate pressing issues.
• Coverage of timely electoral topics as well as analysis of electoral events, produced in Elections Today (this magazine).
• Case Studies that feature practitioners’ experiences of electoral reform and innovation.
• An interactive ACE Electoral Quiz, allowing ACE users to  test and expand their knowledge of elections.

Towards a Practitioners’ Network

Unlike other fields, election administration has very little codified knowledge for best practices. ACE provides this service by (1) creating a rich information resource, (2) providing a workspace for election practitioners to generate new knowledge and (3) coordinating the provision of specialized technical advisory services.

For election practitioners, two kinds of peer support are of primary value. The first is information from people around the world who are grappling with similar issues—dealing with boundary disputes, developing voter registration software or finding creative and constructive ways of liaising with political parties. The first kind of practitioners’ network is therefore topic-based and information-rich and, in time, should become a mechanism of mutual support and professional development, a source of expertise in the field and a quality-control mechanism for the knowledge services section of the ACE Project.

The second type of support is for those who seek to network with colleagues who share a common (or similar) cultural, geographical or historical background. Building on a model that has worked successfully for the EPIC Project (which collects comparative data on elections), entities as diverse as regional organizations, professional associations of electoral administrators, electoral management bodies and nongovernmental organizations that promote democracy will serve as hubs to offer high quality regionally specific information to election practitioners. These organizations are also the most effective sources of data and research, country case studies, sample materials, up-to-date news and other resources relating to how elections are run.

Building Capacity

The ACE partners view the growing global demand for capacity development services for electoral management bodies, as well as a need to offer opportunities for training and professional development of officials involved in election administration in developing countries and transition economies. ACE places a particular emphasis on the power of training, professional advisory services and peer partnerships—especially among electoral management bodies—to increase their capacity to administer free and fair elections and to deepen their professional standards.

Overall, the objective of this third component is to capitalize on the wealth of materials and networks generated by the ACE network, so that member organizations have a menu of capacity development services. As this is a more exploratory (as well as potentially resource-intensive) initiative, the intention is to begin with a pilot. With ACE partner EISA as the host and manager, capacity development services will be threefold: technical advisory services, training and the promotion of peer partnerships.

The methodology and structure that prove successful in the pilot will form the basis for a model. The basic concept is to support the capacity of regional organizations to strengthen delivery of quality electoral services to their respective constituencies.

The ACE partners believe that the value of this information resource and professional network is determined by its users and grows through conversation—especially between those who manage, study and shape the legal, policy and regulatory frameworks for free and fair elections. As professionals engaged in elections administration, we continually examine our own work and hope that as we move forward you help ensure that we meet your needs.

Thérèse Pearce Laanela is the ACE Project Coordinator with International IDEA in Stockholm. Jeff Brady is a senoir program specialist with the F. Clifton White Applied Research Center at IFES. This article is adapted from an article in Electoral Insight, published by Elections Canada in 2006.