Nine Regional Electoral Resource Centres, strategically located around the world, were officially launched at an ACE workshop hosted by International IDEA at its Stockholm headquarters in July 2007. This regional expansion will improve the quality and the usefulness of the materials and features available in ACE.

The ACE Regional Electoral Resource Centres are all electoral institutions or other organizations active in the field of democracy promotion, and can be found in:

• Central and Eastern Europe - The Association of European Election Officials (Hungary)
• South Caucasus and Central Asia - RBI - Resource Building Institute in Democracy Governance and Elections (Armenia)
• West Africa - Gorée Institute (Senegal)
• Eastern Africa - Institute for Education in Democracy (Kenya)
• Central Africa - Commission Electorale Independante (Democratic Republic of Congo)
• Southern Africa - EISA (South Africa)
• Arab World - Al Urdun Al Jadid Research Centre (Jordan)
• South-East Asia - The Centre for Electoral Reform (Indonesia)
• Central America - Instituto Federal Electoral (Mexico)
• South America - Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (Peru)

Contracted by International IDEA and funded by the European Commission and the UN Democracy Fund, the resource centres are the regional knowledge hubs of ACE. Not only do they strive to build and inspire electoral expertise in their own regions, but they also incorporate their respective regional perspectives into the ACE network and enable fruitful knowledge exchange with other election practitioners and electoral assistance providers around the world. The regional centres also increase the availability of the knowledge generated within ACE by translation, dissemination and regional, context-specific application.

More Regional Centres are expected to be established before the end of the year, most notably in the Asian and Pacific region. For 2008, additional centers could be coming on board with more thematic and specific focus.