Negotiating with host governments is one of the main challenges in developing external voting systems. Decisions regarding external voting, including the roles and responsibilities of host countries, are often made hastily against tight timetables. Moreover there is little clarity within the international community regarding who has the mandate to advocate, facilitate and evaluate external voting. There are no consistent policies, practices or standards to guide host governments on the question of foreign electoral activities being conducted on their soil, much less the responsibilities of host governments. Processes chosen build on a mix of precedents, relations, and ad hoc opportunities.
Host countries can be selected for external voting on the basis of a number of criteria, including histories of bilateral, regional or international relations. Other criteria can include the availability of resources, the existence of support infrastructures, and anticipated costs. Perhaps the most important would be the estimated numbers of potential voters they host. Countries which have hosted external electors range from those hosting refugees from a neighbouring country or regional conflict, to those hosting members of a diaspora and those hosting foreign workers. They vary in size, culture, language and infrastructure, as well as their level of development, type of government, foreign relations, human rights standards, and degree of democratization.
Despite these differences, host governments often share the same concerns about security, stability and sovereignty. Each of these concerns contributes to resistance to the idea of the political activity of a foreign country occurring on the host country’s soil. States generally exhibit greater willingness when there is motivation, such as international advocacy and pressure, support for an identified political cause of the eligible electors they host, or sympathy for a particular religious or ethnic group (Newland 2001). Although these sympathies can sometimes be positive motivators, more often such political ‘baggage’ hinders the universal realization of the human right to political participation, threatening the consolidation of democracy and ultimately threatening international peace and security.
When external electors are refugee populations, their status, under international protection, mandates the participation of host governments in advocacy, facilitation and decision-making roles. However, the national interests of these governments, particularly in complex regional contexts, often influence their participation and the degree of international support for external voting.
Foreign relations and negotiations are generally outside the responsibilities of electoral commissions, and exceed their capacities. To negotiate external voting agreements with host countries, therefore, countries generally employ their diplomatic missions. In Estonia and Indonesia, for example, the respective ministries of foreign affairs not only negotiate host country agreements but are responsible for the coordination of external voting programmes.
Some governments have refused to allow foreign electoral activity within their borders. Switzerland, for example, did not allow foreigners to vote in foreign elections on its soil until 1989. Governments hosting Liberian (1997, 2005) and Cambodian (1993) refugees did not allow electoral activities, forcing refugees to repatriate in order to exercise their right to political participation and threatening the credibility of the electoral process and the sustainability of peace. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996), some European countries refused to allow out-of-country voting on their soil, and in these countries registration and voting were carried out exclusively by post. Of the countries that have not allowed foreign electoral activity on their soil, some have a law that prevents such activity, while others have refused such requests for reasons ranging from sovereignty to security to politics. When a host country does resist foreign electoral activity taking place on its soil, fear of its sovereignty being violated is often the primary concern. Many scholars today are reframing the concept of sovereignty as one that is not territorial but rather based on a moral foundation of rights and obligations to a population that may transcend fixed geographical boundaries (see chapter 3). Such a morally based non-territorial conception of sovereignty suggests that external voting is not a violation of a host country’s sovereignty but rather a means of the country of origin fulfilling its obligations as a sovereign to its people through the extension of the rights of political participation to all its citizens, wherever they may reside.
Canada is one of the countries that allow external voting within their borders only by post or inside foreign consulates and embassies. However, in the case of Iraq, given the lack of diplomatic missions, the tight time frame, Canada’s overall support for democratization in Iraq and (presumably) considerable international pressure, Canada made a unique exception for the January 2005 Iraq National Assembly election to allow external voting in other locations within the country. However, other Canadian policies, such as a ban on campaigning, remained in full effect.
