In transitional democracies, where trust in the electoral processes is low, there has been some reluctance to offer citizens living abroad a possibility to vote without returning to the country to cast their vote in person. However, post-conflict countries have been an exception to this rule, as it has often been important to allow those who fled the war the right to vote. The idea would be that those who fled would have an intention of returning and they should be given the right to participate in the democratic process of rebuilding. The 1995 Dayton Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina specified the right of the refugees to vote.

For the first elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996, the external votes were cast in person. In 23 countries the external voting was observed by the OSCE. In later elections, the external voting was by post, and the observation was limited to the counting in centres inside the country. In the first presidential election held in Afghanistan (2004) refugees in Pakistan and Iran were allowed to vote (although they were not in the legislative elections in 2005), and during the first elections in Iraq (2005) after the 2003 war there were extensive arrangements for external voting (see the case study). However, for the Palestinian elections in 1996 and 2005, the diaspora were not allowed to vote, partly for practical reasons and partly because of the lack of Palestinian citizenship and clear documentation to show who is a ‘Palestinian’.

The types of external voting observers will have to assess include:

• voting in a controlled environment, that is, in a place where the secrecy of the ballot is guaranteed by the presence of election staff, and where the vote can be cast without undue influence or intimidation. This means personal voting in the embassies or diplomatic missions of the home country; and
• voting in an uncontrolled environment, without supervision by election staff, and where the secrecy and security of the vote cannot be guaranteed. This voting can include: (a) postal voting, where the voter will be issued with a ballot paper and accompanying documentation which is to be returned by post; (b) electronic voting (e-voting), for example, over the Internet: after a person’s identification and right to vote electronically have been verified, the vote is submitted via a computer program to a central computer for counting; and (c) voting by proxy.

Postal voting is the most common method for uncontrolled voting: although voting over the Internet may become common in future, it is not in use for external voting anywhere yet. Voting in an uncontrolled environment may be vulnerable to impersonation, intimidation and fraud, and observation of the process needs to take such possibilities into account. Voting by proxy is used in some countries, such as the UK. Most countries, however, regard the vote as a personal matter. All votes cast in an uncontrolled environment raise important and controversial issues regarding the secrecy and security of the vote; see chapter 3 for a more extensive discussion.

If the external votes are cast in person, how far voting can be observed is basically a question of resources. If voting is done by post or electronically via the Internet, observation becomes more difficult.