Auditing of voter registration is of prime interest to stakeholders of the electoral process.
It provides the opportunity to understand the processes for establishing/updating voter
registers as well as assessing the resulting voters register. Given the role played by voters
registers in elections, several attempts have been made to standardize their auditing
procedure. However, u to now, there is no systematic approach to their verification. This is
in part due to the complex process leading to establishing or updating voters registers. The
approach suggested to auditing voter registration is based on first assessing the process
itself and later using statistical testing as a tool to collect auditing metrics (i.e. evidence) to
enable interpretation of facts discovered when evaluating the registration process.
The electoral cycle approach provides three entry points for the audit of voter registration
processes:
- Pre-electoral period: The quality of the existing voter register needs to be checked
in the pre-electoral period as part of the planning and implementation of the
electoral operations. This makes it easy for the electoral administration to
update the voters’ records, if necessary. To ensure credibility in the electoral
process, it is required that stakeholders are involved in the audit
- Electoral period: A second assessment should be done to address the objections
raised by voters. This assessment should take place in each electoral district
and registration centre and all objections need to be supported by evidence
to eliminate subjective issues
- Post-electoral period: When the vote is over, the electoral cycle provides for audit
and evaluation activities. In this case, the audit identifies possible improvements
to the existing voter registration
The Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) represents a set of
rules that facilitate the audit of an organisation’s – such as an EMB in charge of the voter
registration process – internal processes. The stages of an independent COBIT-based audit
process are as follows:
- The audit charter (approved by the EMB)
- The independence clauses
- The professional ethics and standards to follow
- The competence of the auditor (the scope of his or her work)
- The auditing plan
- The audit per se
- The report
- The follow-up activities of the audited organisation
Audit of voter registration processes entails the audit of two elements, namely the registry
itself but also the procedures for its creation and/or update. Three techniques are used to
this end:
- Audit through a COBIT-adapted framework to evaluate and assess the
registration process and thus the flow of information from data collection forms
to the creation of access points for voters and all the way to the registration of
voters (and, if applicable, the issuance of voters cards)
- Statistical testing to assess the quality of the voter register and the voters list
through the “list to voters” and/or the “people to list” methods
- IT audit-standard practice to examine the technological components and
infrastructure of the voter registration process and registry
Case Study: Voter Registration Audit in Yemen
The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), in collaboration with the Yemen Electoral Monitoring Network
(YEMN), carried out an audit of the voter registration process in Yemen in 2008. The audit was undertaken partly as a result
of distrust among the local political parties regarding the impartiality of the electoral commission and partly because of the
widespread protests that occurred during the registration process.
NDI and YEMN selected 13 governorates to monitor. The governorates chosen were particular in two respects: they either had
disproportionately low levels of female representation in the registry and/or the number of registered voters exceeded the actual
population. A 5% random sampling method was used to further select the registration centres to be monitored. In total, YEMN
monitored 330 of 5620 centres (5.8%) in the 13 selected governorates.
Examples of the findings of the monitors include:
- That there was a lack of proper procedure in the registration • centres, including for example the failure to ask for
identification documents, failure to check faces against identification documents, incorrect recording of voter
information, registration of voters at unscheduled hours and the collection of voter information by community
members and security personnel
- That registration centres did not receive adequate supplies (film, voter identification cards, cameras etc.) or the
equipment was unusable. Moreover, in some instances the commissioners did not know how to use the Polaroid
cameras that had been distributed by the electoral commission
- That community leaders and security personnel interfered with the work of the registration staff through for
example pushing commissioners to register ineligible voters
- That the voter registration environment was marked by protests and in some instances violence or threats of
violence in unstable areas
