Special and out-of-country voting are options put in place for those voters who cannot attend regular polling stations on election day. Such voters may be institutionalized or housebound, refugees, diplomatic or military personnel and diasporas. Arrangements are made to allow them to vote on a special day or series of days at special locations, or at mobile polling stations on election day. Votes can be cast in person or by post.[1]

Organizing voting for external populations is more complex than organizing in-country polling, and taking on this logistical and financial burden in a challenging environment, especially in the context of a post-conflict election, is rarely without risks. A large external population could change the outcome of an election in ways that may not be politically acceptable in-country.[2] Moreover, due to complexities associated with special and external voting, political actors or independent observers may not be in a position to verify independently special and external voting’s integrity. All these issues can be sources of dispute, especially in a closely contested election. 

Empirical cases: 

• Presidential elections in Romania in 2014. The legal electoral framework provides for only one way to vote from abroad: voting in person at a Romanian embassy. For the first round of the 2 November 2014 presidential election the Romanian Foreign Ministry distributed 600,000 ballots to its diplomatic missions. The number of eligible voters abroad, however, amounted to approximately 3 million people. The limited supply of ballot papers resulted in citizens visiting embassies to vote in vain. Inadequate organization of external voting was in violation of constitutional rights, and was viewed by some as an instance of election fraud that angered both expatriates deprived of their right to vote and the Romanian public. In Bucharest protests erupted in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs following the conclusion of the first round.[3]
  
  Interrelated factors: inadequate operational planning (internal); rejection of the election results (internal).[4]