The
political aspects of organizing elections in another country are to be explored
here. It addresses issues that pertain to the roles and responsibilities of the
countries which host foreign nationals voting in elections of their country of
origin, including security, the prevention of fraud, electoral registration,
election campaigning, voter information and education, and the costs to the
host country of external voting programmes. Finally, it offers some guidelines
for institutional arrangements that address these and other issues. However, as
the context of each and every external voting programme is different and may
require different procedures and processes to be in place, they should be
considered as broad guidelines only.
External
voting has two main purposes: it is a means of ensuring the realization of
political rights for people living outside their country, and it is a means of
increasing political participation and thereby building trust and confidence in
electoral processes and the
democratic governments they produce. Growing cross-border migration has
produced populations that are excluded from politics in both their home
countries and their countries of residence. If a part of the population is
excluded from the electoral process, the resulting system of governance suffers
from a lack of legitimacy, accountability and sustainability, particularly in
fragile democracies or post-conflict environments.
Despite
making a critical contribution to democratization, external voting has not been
used extensively—partly because it is perceived as straining financial,
security and human resources, but also because of the complexities of
negotiating with governments which may be potentially eligible electors,
particularly when those electors are refugees or undocumented migrant workers.
Conducting external voting presents a number of organizational and political
issues, many of which can be addressed by the establishment of certain
institutional arrangements in coordination with host countries.
