Countries that allow external voting need to ensure that it is conducted in such a way as to meet the requirements of security, transparency and secrecy. It is also desirable that as far as possible all electors have the same opportunity to vote. However, countries and territories also need to make adjustments and innovations to cope with the challenges that are particular to external voting, such as the geographical location of voters, security in transporting ballot papers, the high costs of external voting and other administrative issues mentioned above. It is therefore interesting—if perhaps not surprising—to see that in general the procedures for voting from abroad are equivalent to those that apply within the national territory. Nor it is surprising that in some cases exceptional procedures are adopted, especially to bring a wide range of facilities within the reach of all external electors in order for them to be able to exercise their right to vote from far-off or inaccessible places. Every voting procedure when applied abroad has implications in terms of the coverage of potential voters and their opportunity to cast a vote.
There are five different voting methods in use for external voting throughout the world. These are:
• personal voting at diplomatic missions or other designated places;
• postal voting;
• voting by proxy;
• e-voting; and
• voting by fax.
In most of the cases, only one voting method is available to the external voter. Of these, majority of countries opt to use conventional personal voting at a polling station that is specially set up, for example, at a diplomatic mission or other designated place. This is by far the most common procedure for external voting. Twenty-five countries use postal voting only. Voting by proxy is the sole voting method in four countries. In the remaining cases, a mix of two or more voting methods are in place, including the exceptional use of voting by fax and e-voting.
External voting procedures
When personal voting is used, it would be easy to imagine that the participation of external voters depends on the extent or range of the home country’s diplomatic or consular networks around the world. The differences between countries in this respect are considerable. However, the correlation between the number of official representations overseas and the coverage of potential external voters is not a linear one, since the geographical distribution of potential voters abroad is also important. Specific legal provisions are sometimes made to install polling stations abroad on the basis of technical or logistical considerations, such as the estimated number and concentration of potential external voters, or the number actually registered in a certain jurisdiction.
For financial or logistical reasons, it is not unusual for countries that have external voting to limit the arrangements for registering and voting to a particular group of jurisdictions overseas where it is believed that higher numbers of potential voters reside. The Dominican Republic chose a group of cities located in five countries (Canada, Spain, Puerto Rico, the United States and Venezuela) to conduct external voting for the presidential elections of 2004 (its first experience of external voting). Mozambique restricted its first external voting operation, during the presidential and legislative elections of 2004, to nine countries, of which seven were in Africa and two in Europe (Germany and Portugal). The coverage of Senegal’s external voting operation for its elections in 2000 was a little wider since it was applied in 15 countries, including from outside the region four European countries, Canada and the United States.
The independence referendum held by Tokelau in 2006 might be the most extreme case of this practice, and was controversial for this reason. Initial proposals limited external voting to Tokelauans in Samoa. However, objections raised by the larger number of Tokelauans in Australia and New Zealand led to the vote, initially scheduled for late 2005, being postponed. The restrictions in the cases of Afghanistan and Honduras have been also very considerable. For its pioneering external voting operation in its 2002 presidential elections, Honduras decided to restrict the registration of external electors and external voting to a small group of six cities in the United States where it has consular representation, and it maintained the same coverage for the presidential elections held in 2006. As is mentioned above, Afghanistan only conducted external voting for its 2004 presidential elections in the two neighbouring countries where most of its displaced people where located—Iran and Pakistan.
To take a related example, there are countries which initially considered allowing external voting in all countries where they had official representations, but made the actual installation of polling stations conditional on the existence of a minimum number of registered voters. The required threshold differs substantially. In certain cases, such provisions may also govern the establishment of polling stations on ships at sea.
Votes can also be cast abroad in polling stations installed in the head offices or premises of international or regional organizations, or in places specially set up or hired in the host country, such as sports facilities or schools. During post-conflict transitions where the international community plays a key role, such as those of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2004, or, as in Cambodia, Eritrea, East Timor or Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, external voting operations may be assisted or even conducted by international organizations.
The other main procedure for external voting that can be used in an exclusive way is postal voting. Some countries use only this method of external voting. It is most commonly found in Western Europe. Postal voting can be an efficient and low-cost method if the postal services operate well, efficiently and safely. However, postal services which do not live up to these standards can do damage to the electoral process for external voters.
As is mentioned above, several countries have a mixed system using two or more different voting procedures for external voting. This does not necessarily imply that the voter has the option of choosing freely the procedure he or she finds most comfortable or suitable; different methods may be available to external voters depending on where in the world they reside and what the reliable voting channels are from that location. These countries can be grouped according to five combinations of voting methods. The mix of personal and postal voting is the predominant one. A combination of procedures may be chosen to encourage electoral participation or to compensate for limitations or inadequacies that may arise from the use of only one system, in terms of coverage, certainty or reliability. For example, personal voting better fulfils the principles and imperatives of security, confidentiality and reliability in the casting and transmission of the vote, but its coverage of the potential electorate can be far more limited than that of postal voting. There is no doubt that, at least in a strictly geographical sense, the availability of a wider range of alternatives implies better potential coverage of voters abroad. Nevertheless, take-up will still depend to a great extent on the nature and features of the options available, such as the precise geographical location of the voter.
In some cases the elector will be able to freely select the method that best suits him or her; in others, the elector’s geographical location may effectively restrict access to one procedure only.
Countries with mixed procedures for external voting
Countries such as Australia, Belgium, Estonia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden stand apart from the rest since they offer the voter abroad three or more alternative ways of casting a vote. This—in combination with the fact that these countries impose no additional requirements, such as a voter having to spend a set period of time abroad or a set number of voters having to be abroad at the same time—clearly shows their intention of achieving the greatest possible coverage. However, their arrangements are very different.
Until recently, Belgium, with the reforms introduced in 2001—which expanded significantly the number of available options—and Sweden, with reforms introduced in 2002 which made postal voting, already available to some voters, accessible to all, were the only two countries to offer their voters abroad the possibility of choosing ‘freely’ between three procedures for external voting, although there are differences between them. Estonia and the Netherlands have since joined this group as well. In Belgium the following options are available: (a) voting at the diplomatic missions where the external elector has been registered, (b) through a representative or proxy at the same mission or in a national municipality (but only if the representative is resident within the area covered by the diplomatic mission or in the Belgian municipality, respectively), and (c) voting. In Sweden it is possible to vote by post from abroad or in person at diplomatic missions. Postal voting was previously only available for Swedish voters residing in Germany and Switzerland: these countries did not allow external voting to take place at embassies on their territory. Sweden also has a unique procedure, called voting by messenger: the elector needs a special outer envelope which he/she can either obtain from the election administration or collect at any available voting place. Apart from the elector, a witness and a messenger are required to be present at the preparation of the vote. The elector prepares the vote in person, and the witness has to certify with his/her signature and personal identification number that the voting procedure was properly carried out. The messenger also has to sign the outer envelope, and transport and deliver the envelope with the documents and the vote to a diplomatic mission abroad or polling station within the country. The witness and the messenger cannot be the same person. This procedure is qualitatively different from that of the proxy vote, since the voter marks the ballot paper himself or herself.
Estonia and the Netherlands both offer postal voting, and in addition Estonia offers personal voting and the Netherlands voting by proxy. But what these two countries have in common as a third method is e-voting, which has only been implemented recently.
Australia and New Zealand make the personal vote and the postal vote generally available to overseas voters. In addition, voting by fax is possible for restricted groups of electors who otherwise could easily be deprived of the opportunity to cast their vote—those living in inhospitable areas or areas that are very difficult to reach, such as the polar zones. This facility gives priority to the principle of coverage and inclusion of voters over considerations of secrecy in the sending out and return of the ballot papers. Access by fax requires special application and is used only when absolutely necessary.
The United States, which is a federal and highly decentralized country where the different states have a great degree of autonomy in adopting and developing their own electoral laws and procedures, also offers up to three methods of casting an external vote. In addition to postal voting, which is allowed by all states, a few states open up the possibility of voting by fax or e-voting albeit in a very restrictive way since only a small number of electors abroad have access to these procedures. For its presidential elections of 2000, the United States was the first country to test, in a highly selective and very controlled way, a mechanism for external voting using e-voting, a method that is not only electronic but also genuinely remote or distant. Although there is no doubt that the implications of the use of new technologies for the transmission of votes will be very promising in the near future and several countries are already designing or testing pilot programmes for their use, their application to external voting is still essentially undergoing a test phase.
For the countries which allow two procedures for external voting, it is worth stressing that the potential coverage is related to the characteristics and conditions that regulate the application of each one of them and the precise ways in which they are combined. In Indonesia and Japan the external voter can choose between personal voting at diplomatic missions and the postal vote. In France and a number of countries in Francophone Africa, personal voting exists for those registered at embassies and consulates, often restricted to presidential elections and perhaps referendums, while proxy voting is used by those on temporary government or military service in professional missions abroad. The Philippines decided for its first implementation of external voting in 2004 that greater coverage of voters would be achieved by personal voting at diplomatic missions and other official premises, and this method was applied in 80 countries, while postal voting was only available for external electors located in three countries (Canada, Japan and the UK) because they had efficient and reliable postal services. The case of Portugal is also special, since external electors can only vote by post in parliamentary elections and have to vote in person in presidential elections.
