Particularly in emerging democracies, electoral legal frameworks are being designed to cover all electoral process matters that are relevant to the delivery of free, fair and credible elections. This can have the advantage of promoting electoral integrity by ensuring that EMBs exercise control over the entire process. In many countries, EMBs have powers and functions across a wide range of activities throughout the electoral cycle.

The core functions in the conduct of an election are:

1. Determining who is eligible to vote: the right of adult citizens to participate in elections is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and ensuring that only eligible people vote helps confer legitimacy on the election process.
2. Receiving and validating the nominations of electoral participants (for elections, political parties and/or candidates): the right to stand for election is a fundamental political right, and ensuring that all contestants have followed the law helps confer legitimacy on the election.
3. Conducting polling: the ability to safely cast a vote is at the core of an election.
4. Counting the votes cast so that the election result reflects the will of the voters.
5. Tabulating the votes in accordance with the electoral system so that the winners can be identified.
6. Running a credible organization so that the legitimacy of the election is not compromised by the actions of those conducting the election.

Most of these functions may be expanded in some situations, giving EMBs a range of other functions:

• Determining who is eligible to vote

     –  identifying and registering voters

     –  identifying and registering voters living in another country who are still eligible to vote

     –  developing and maintaining a national electoral register

• Receiving and validating the nominations of electoral participants (for elections, political parties and/or candidates)

    – registering political parties

    – regulating political party financing

    – overseeing political party pre-selections or primaries

• Conducting polling

    – planning and implementing electoral logistics

    – hiring and training temporary electoral staff

    – training political parties’ and candidates’ poll watchers

    – directing the police or other security services to ensure a peaceful election

    – accrediting and regulating the conduct of election observers

    – adjudicating electoral disputes

    – organizing external voting for those not in the country

• Counting the votes
• Tabulating the votes

    – announcing and certifying election results 

• Running a credible organization

    – making national or regional electoral policies

    – planning electoral services

    – training electoral staff

    – reviewing  and  evaluating  the  adequacy  of  the  electoral  framework and the EMB’s own performance after elections

Other common functional areas of work are:

• Delimiting electoral district boundaries
• Regulating the election campaign period
• Regulating the conduct of political parties and candidates, in particular during the election campaign
• Registering third parties and regulating their behaviour
• Regulating the conduct of the media during elections
• Regulating opinion polls
• Controlling and where possible preventing electoral fraud
• Instilling community responsibility to encourage democracy at home and elsewhere:

    – conducting voter information/education and civic education
    – supporting access for all
    – promoting equality and equity policies and practices
    – providing electoral research facilities
    – advising the government and legislature on electoral reform issues
    – participating in international electoral assistance services

• Providing services for conducting private organizations’ (such as trade unions, civil society organizations) elections.