The most basic questions are why a legal framework is important to democratic elections and what exactly is meant by the term “legal framework”?  The first question is well answered by a publication of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) entitled, Promoting Legal Frameworks for Democratic Elections:

 Establishing the “rules of the game” for elections should be a vital concern to political parties, candidates and citizens alike. Democratic elections serve to settle fairly and peacefully the competition among those seeking to exercise governmental powers as representatives of the people. Democratic elections also serve as the means for citizens to express freely their will as to who shall have the authority and legitimacy to wield the reins of government as their representatives. It is thus in the direct and immediate interests of electoral contestants – political parties and candidates – and of the population as a whole – citizens and their associations – to ensure that the rules for electoral competition, as well as the way those rules are enforced, guarantee that a genuine democratic election takes place.[i]

From an electoral point of view, “legal framework” has both a broad and a technical meaning. Broadly speaking, a legal framework may be seen as the entirety of a group of constitutional, legislative, regulatory, jurisprudential and managerial rules that together establish the voting rights used by citizens to elect representative officials. In a more technical sense, the legal framework can also be seen as a collection of procedural techniques. From this topic’s point of view, “legal framework” is understood in both such meanings however the default approach will be to develop a working definition of “legal framework” as broad as possible in order to achieve a more fulsome understanding.

Indeed, a legal framework may also be further extended by electoral regulations that authorize citizens to use public powers on their own (using legal devices to achieve legislative goals, to define public policies, to impeach any public officer). Elections are neither the only way to elect public officials (there are legal and randomly made appointments; besides, elections are also undertaken by collegiate institutions such as corporations’ boards following no electoral laws whatsoever) nor are used to exclusively to select public officials. As a matter of fact, citizens also use elections to accept or reject legislative bills, governmental decisions or resolutions taken by a public authority (referendum, collective lawsuits and impeachments are used to do so).