Negotiating
with host governments is one of the main challenges in developing external
voting systems. Decisions regarding external voting, including the roles and
responsibilities of host countries, are often made hastily against tight
timetables. Moreover there is little clarity within the international community
regarding who has the mandate to advocate, facilitate and evaluate external
voting. There are no consistent policies, practices or standards to guide host
governments on the question of foreign electoral activities being conducted on
their soil, much less the responsibilities of host governments. Processes
chosen build on a mix of precedents, relations, and ad hoc opportunities.
Host
countries can be selected for external voting on the basis of a number of
criteria, including histories of bilateral, regional or international relations.
Other criteria can include the availability of resources, the existence of
support infrastructures, and anticipated costs. Perhaps the most important
would be the estimated numbers of potential voters they host. Countries which
have hosted external electors range from those hosting refugees from a
neighbouring country or regional conflict, to those hosting members of a diaspora
and those hosting foreign workers. They vary in size, culture, language and
infrastructure, as well as their level of development, type of government,
foreign relations, human rights standards, and degree of democratization.
Despite
these differences, host governments often share the same concerns about
security, stability and sovereignty. Each of these concerns contributes to
resistance to the idea of the political activity of a foreign country occurring
on the host country’s soil. States generally exhibit greater willingness when
there is motivation, such as international advocacy and pressure, support for
an identified political cause of the eligible electors they host, or sympathy
for a particular religious or ethnic group (Newland 2001). Although these
sympathies can sometimes be positive motivators, more often such political
‘baggage’ hinders the universal realization of the human right to political
participation, threatening the consolidation of democracy and ultimately
threatening international peace and security.
When
external electors are refugee populations, their status, under international
protection, mandates the participation of host governments in advocacy,
facilitation and decision-making roles. However, the national interests of
these governments, particularly in complex regional contexts, often influence
their participation and the degree of international support for external
voting.
Foreign
relations and negotiations are generally outside the responsibilities of
electoral commissions, and exceed their capacities. To negotiate external
voting agreements with host countries, therefore, countries generally employ
their diplomatic missions. In Estonia
and Indonesia,
for example, the respective ministries of foreign affairs not only negotiate
host country agreements but are responsible for the coordination of external
voting programmes.
Some
governments have refused to allow foreign electoral activity within their
borders. Switzerland,
for example, did not allow foreigners to vote in foreign elections on its soil
until 1989. Governments hosting Liberian (1997, 2005) and Cambodian (1993)
refugees did not allow electoral activities, forcing refugees to repatriate in
order to exercise their right to political participation and threatening the
credibility of the electoral process and the sustainability of peace. In the
case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996), some European countries
refused to allow out-of-country voting on their soil, and in these countries
registration and voting were carried out exclusively by post. Of the countries
that have not allowed foreign electoral activity on their soil, some have a law
that prevents such activity, while others have refused such requests for
reasons ranging from sovereignty to security to politics. When a host country
does resist foreign electoral activity taking place on its soil, fear of its
sovereignty being violated is often the primary concern. Many scholars today
are reframing the concept of sovereignty as one that is not territorial but
rather based on a moral foundation of rights and obligations to a population
that may transcend fixed geographical boundaries (see chapter 3). Such a
morally based non-territorial conception of sovereignty suggests that external
voting is not a violation of a host country’s sovereignty but rather a means of
the country of origin fulfilling its obligations as a sovereign to its people
through the extension of the rights of political participation to all its
citizens, wherever they may reside.
Canada is one of the countries that allow
external voting within their borders only by post or inside foreign consulates
and embassies. However, in the case of Iraq, given the lack of diplomatic
missions, the tight time frame, Canada’s overall support for democratization in
Iraq and (presumably) considerable international pressure, Canada made a unique
exception for the January 2005 Iraq National Assembly election to allow
external voting in other locations within the country. However, other Canadian
policies, such as a ban on campaigning, remained in full effect.
