Voter registration is one of
the stages at which there are significant opportunities to manipulate election
results. For this reason special efforts are made to ensure that the voter list
is accurate and reliable. Accuracy in this case means that all eligible voters
are listed; they are listed only once; and only eligible persons are listed.
Creating and maintaining an
accurate voter list requires internal safeguards as well as a system of cross-checks.
It is vital to keep lists up to date, and to eliminate duplicate registrations,
names of voters who have moved out of the electoral district or lost
eligibility (such as the deceased, incompetent or those who have had their
voter rights suspended through a criminal sentence). Equally critical to
maintaining electoral integrity is close monitoring and enforcement of the
relevant voter registration procedures.
Ensuring
Only Eligible Voters Register
Political parties and
candidates often go to great lengths to ensure that their supporters register
to vote. They may offer incentives, such as transportation to registration
sites or promises of benefits for the area should they win the election. Some
parties and candidates may wrongly go so far as to encourage people to register
in an electoral district where they do not reside, or to register despite not being
eligible to vote.
Some persons who are not
citizens or are under age may try to register. Others may try to register more
than once. Most systems deter and prevent such abuses by requiring registrants
to show proof of identity or citizenship; this is particularly common in
countries with a lack of trust in the electoral process or a history of voter
fraud. However, integrity may also be at risk if the need to prove identity
becomes so burdensome that it turns away potential voters. This happened during
the 2003 legislative elections in Cambodia;
people wishing to register had to produce several identification documents and
pay fees to obtain them.[1]
These problems can be avoided
by requiring voters to show documents that they should already have or that are
easily available, such as a national ID card, birth certificate or passport.
There should also be alternatives for people whose papers were destroyed in war
or never issued by the government. For example, in the 2000 elections in Haiti,
two registered voters could vouch for a third person without papers. The
registration numbers of the two guarantors were noted on the voters list and
they were held responsible for the truthfulness of their guarantee. Similarly, in the Liberian national elections, 2005, voters who lacked other evidence
of eligibility could be registered based on the attestation of a village chief
or clergyman.
Voter
Registration Cards and Accuracy of Lists
Most countries have a list of
people registered to vote. Since it is used on election day to determine who
can vote, the list must be accurate and protected against any tampering. Along
with recording names on the list, some systems issue a card to each voter upon
registration. The card proves that the person has applied to register and that
the application has been accepted. Typically, the voter must produce this card
at the polls in order to vote.
In some places (such as Romania),
the card or another form of voter identification is endorsed, showing that the
voter has voted in an election. This
helps prevent multiple voting, but may subject voters to pressure from various
authorities (including local officials) if they have not voted. If an endorsement of identification is
provided for, it should be limited to a voter card and not another,
general-purpose identification document.
Also the card should be designed in a way (such as laminated on the
front side but untreated stock on the reverse) so that it can be endorsed with
a permanent mark.[2]
Voter cards are an integrity
safeguard. For the cards to be effective, they should have security features deterring
unauthorized use or forgery. For example, serial numbers may enable electoral
administrators to track cards. If registration fraud is a major problem,
special paper may be used to make the cards more difficult to forge. In some
systems, the card bears the voter’s digital fingerprints or photograph, and
these also appear on the voters list.
Before electoral reform in Mexico,
the voters list was largely used to manipulate election results. That is why
one of the 1996 reforms sought to make the list accurate. For example,
fingerprints were added to voter cards to reduce the potential for multiple voting.[3]
Voter lists should also be
numbered in an ordinal or other sequence so that electoral authorities can
track them and check whether any are missing. If the voter list is compiled
based on civil registration data, then – in order to protect the privacy of the
voter – the voter’s civil registration number should not appear in any
published list.
Lists may be produced in
duplicate or triplicate, with one copy for the local election office, another
for the regional office and a third for the national office, as applicable.
This practice can deter internal tampering, such as unlawfully adding or
removing names, since it would be hard to make the same changes to each copy of
the list.
A copy of the voters list is
usually posted in a public place so that citizens, political parties and
monitors can check the names it contains. The electoral calendar often sets a
time frame for inspecting and making corrections to the lists in order to
rectify mistakes or remove the names of ineligible persons. Individual voters should by all means have
the opportunity to conduct their own registratio, and are also commonly
enabled to confirm the registration of their families and residents of their
property. Candidates, political parties
and national observer organizations can also inspect the lists, and electoral
participants should have the ability to seek corrections if necessary.
Monitoring
Monitoring of voter
registration by a large number of domestic and international observers as well
as political party monitors is an effective deterrent to the types of fraud and
manipulation most common during this phase of the electoral process. Individual
citizens may also play a role in helping to ensure accurate registration by
looking at posted lists and pointing out or even challenging the registration
of persons they believe are not eligible. In New Zealand,
for instance, every office of the Registrar of Electors has a copy of the
entire national voters list, and each post office has a copy of the local list.[4] The
lists are open for public inspection. Similar methods are used in most
countries.
Enforcing
Registration Law
Enforcement of registration
rules and anti-fraud provisions helps maintain a clean and accurate voter list. It is illegal to falsify voter lists
in almost every electoral system.
Offenders usually face prosecution. In
some countries, such as the States arising from the Former Yugoslavia, there are also provisions in law penalizing
officials who willfully fail to register voters or otherwise deny their
electoral rights.
[1] National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs, Cambodian Elections: Lessons Learned and Future Directions -
Post-Election Conference Report, February 2004
[2] D. Finn, “Civil and Voter
Registration in Romania”, Elections Today (quarterly publication of the
International Foundation for Election Systems, IFES), Vol. 9, No. 2 (Winter
2000), pp. 11-12
[3] Schedler, Andreas, Distrust Breeds Bureaucracy: The
Formal Regulation of Electoral Governance in Mexico, Mexico City, Facultad Latinoamericana de
Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), 1999, p. 10
[4] Elections New Zealand,
Everything You Need to Know About Enrolling to Vote
