Relations with the media are an important part of the communications strategy of an electoral management body, but they are not the only part.

The broader point is that EMBs do not work in isolation. Communicating their plans and decisions is an essential part of what makes an EMB effective. It is possible to organize the best elections in the world – but it is also necessary to be able to communicate. Or, to put it more precisely, if an EMB cannot communicate then it certainly will not organize the best elections in the world.

EMBs work in a constant cycle. Once a country has gone through its initial, transitional democratic election, it will be bound into an endless process of election organization: legislative (two houses perhaps), presidential, regional, local – even, in the case of Europe, international. There may be plebiscites or referenda. There may be votes on particular proposed laws. Democracy, in its nuts and bolts, is hard work. And the work does not stop.

The traditional phases of project management do not therefore sit easily with an EMB. It may be difficult to separate out planning, implementation and evaluation, when the next election begins almost before the last one is finished. Nevertheless, planning and evaluation are both an essential part of the process of organizing elections. Communication, in turn, is crucial to both.

Planning works much more effectively if other stakeholders are involved. One clear example relating to media and elections concerns the development of regulations and codes of conduct. These will work best when all those affected, particularly in this instance the media and political parties, are involved in the planning process. Another concerns timetables. It s important for both media and EMB to understand each other’s differing priorities and deadlines.

Communication is equally important in evaluation. There is a danger in organizational evaluation to focus on measuring outputs rather than impact. This is partly because this is much easier to achieve. There is little difficulty in using, for example, the number of press releases issued by an EMB’s media department as an indicator of effectiveness. The problem is that the press releases in themselves only show what has been put out, not what has been used and understood. Real effectiveness indicators are harder to develop and require communication and consultation with those affected. In that particular example a survey of media asking them the most effective forms for releasing news would be a more useful evaluative tool. Monitoring the media to see how far they made use of materials issued by the EMB might be even more effective.