Where a country’s electoral processes are proceeding reasonably well, risk generally tends to be minimized by the incremental pursuit of electoral reform, making small changes over a period of several elections. The simultaneous implementation of major reforms in a range of different areas can place a great burden on an EMB, and will increase the risk of suboptimal implementation, especially when deadlines are tight. While sound implementation has the potential to meet intended targets, and hopefully to build confidence and trust in the effectiveness of elections and the EMB, failed implementation can have the opposite effect. This will be especially problematic if reforms are pursued without strong political support across the board; opponents of a particular initiative are likely be looking for opportunities to characterize it as a failure, and to push for its abandonment.
There are three main risks inherent in reform processes. The first is that of trying to solve the wrong problem. For example, there will be little benefit for a country to invest heavily in a technologically sophisticated voter registration system if the real problem is that the polling officials are intimidated, suborned, or corrupted by parties or candidates, making the quality of the register itself largely irrelevant. Where a country’s electoral culture is truly dire, there may be little to gain from massive investment in technology, since even if it works it may simply displace fraud from one area of the system to another. Major reforms, especially those involving technological innovation, can be very expensive, particularly when factors such as long-term maintenance costs and depreciation are taken into account. The task of setting up such systems can easily overwhelm even a well-established and resourced organization, placing massive demands on the time of senior management and potentially drawing attention away from other problem areas that, judged objectively, may be more deserving of priority attention
A second risk is that of making unrealistic assumptions about non-technical matters on which the success of a system depends. For example, a database intended to be used to maintain a continuously updated register of voters may fail to live up to expectations if there is no way of ensuring the constant flow of data required to keep the database up to date.
A third risk is a loss of agility. A decision to adopt a specific technological approach may well lock a country or organization into maintaining a way of dealing with a problem that will be difficult, or increasingly expensive, to sustain in the long run. For example, organizations that invested heavily in Internet- based processes, not just in the electoral field, are now finding that they are having to retool their PC-based systems to make them readily accessible from smartphones and tablets, as consumers’ preferred ways of accessing the Internet change.
