The growth of observation was not limited to international
organizations. The first major citizen
election observation organization, National Citizens’ Movement for Free
Elections (NAMFREL), emerged in the mid-1980s in the Philippines with the aim
of raising awareness of manipulation by the repressive military regime of
Ferdinand Marcos. NAMFREL members initially organized for the 1984
Congressional elections, but it was their success fielding 500,000 volunteers
for a snap presidential election in 1986 that helped allay skepticism about the
utility of citizens observing their own elections and paved the way for the
growth of the practice around the world in parallel with international
observation. In this case, NAMFREL’s exposure of fraud on the part of the
Marcos government, using parallel vote tabulation (PVT), or “quick count,” of a
statistically significant sample of polling stations, contributed significantly
to later overthrowing the regime.[i]
Following NAMFREL’s use of PVT in the Philippines, the technique was used
in Africa during the 1991 Zambian national elections. NDI trained and oversaw
Zambian counters whose data enabled the groups to confirm an opposition victory
on election night – results that were not officially announced until
significantly later.[ii]
NDI continued to develop PVT methodology throughout the 1990s, emphasizing
international support to national civil society organizations with the capacity
to field thousands of volunteers in a given country. This quantitative data
complemented the qualitative reporting from a necessarily smaller number of
international observers where the two worked alongside one another. During
Indonesia’s 1999 legislative elections, for example, the NDI-Carter Center
joint mission announced in its preliminary statement on counting and tabulation
that PVT results from a civil society group, the Rectors’ Forum, supported its
assessment of a fair process: “Significantly, the results of these various
unofficial tabulations do not provide any evidence to support allegations of
widespread or significant fraud or tampering designed to benefit any particular
party or parties.”[iii]
NAMFREL’s example had a ripple effect around the region and
its model was replicated: Bangladesh in 1990 and 1991, Thailand 1992, Pakistan
1993 and Nepal 1994. In all of these cases, CSOs engaged in what was then
primarily poll watching, whereby observers were deployed exclusively to observe
polling and counting operations in polling stations. National citizen
observation also took root in Latin America in the late 1980s in the wake of
different pro-democratic movements on the continent. In Chile, in the run-up to
the 1988 referendum, CIVITAS went beyond NAMFREL’s scope of work, focusing on
civic education. By the mid-1990s, citizen electoral observation had taken
place in El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua and Venezuela.[iv]
As noted, a powerful democratisation wave was at work in
Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism in 1989. In addition
to growing inter-governmental observation efforts in the region, national
observation efforts blossomed as well, including the Bulgarian Association for
Free Elections (BAFE), which used PVT methodology to quell post-election protests
when, in the 1990 elections, its polling sample provided confirmation to the
opposition that it had lost a free and fair election.[v]
In 1992, citizen observation was also visible in elections held in Albania and
Romania.
Citizen observation also made inroads into African elections
soon after NAMFREL’s success. During the 1989 national elections, Namibian
Council of Churches collected information and reported on election-related
intimidation, whilst the Namibia Peace Plan 435 monitored media coverage.[vi]
Similar efforts sprung up throughout the continent in the 1990s, such as the
National Election Monitoring Unit in Kenya or the Ligue Burundaise de Droits de
l’Homme in Burundi[vii].
In the Middle East, the Yemenite National Committee for Free Elections observed
the post-reunification elections in 1993.[viii]
These CSO movements around the globe often emerged from the
commitment of grassroots activists and activist organizations, which in some
cases merged with reformist groups from disgruntled elites. Frequently, the actual
organizations or networks carrying out the observation were created to respond
to a lack of confidence and credibility in electoral processes as a whole. For
example, in 2000, Transparencia, in Peru, which worked both in civic and voter
education as well as observation, helped to fill a large gap in confidence and
credibility at a critical point in the country’s history.[ix]
[i]
Bjornlund, E.C., “Beyond Free and Fair:
Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy”, Woodrow Wilson Press, Washington,
2004, p.218
[ii]
Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair, 88.
[iii]
NDI and The Carter Center, “Post-Election
Statement No. 3 of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and The Carter
Center International Election Observation Mission: Indonesia’s June 7, 1999,
Legislative Elections” (Jakarta: NDI/The Carter Center, 1999), 2,
https://www.ndi.org/files/212_id_3rdelect_0.pdf.
[iv] Núñez
Vargas, E., “Observación Nacional de Elecciones”, p. 4-5.
[vi]
Eric Bjornlund, Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building
Democracy, (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), 220.
[ix] Bernbaum, M., “Transparencia: La
sociedad civil peruana observa las controvertidas elecciones del 2000”,
Asociación Civil Transparencia, 2002. See also, O’Grady, P.,
López-Pintor, R., and Stevens, M. (eds.), Promoting and Defending Democracy:
The Work of Domestic Election Observer Groups, ERIS, undated, p.
18-24.
