In
transitional democracies, where trust in the electoral
processes is low, there has been some reluctance to offer
citizens living abroad a possibility to vote without returning to the country
to cast their vote in person. However, post-conflict countries have been an
exception to this rule, as it has often been important to allow those who fled
the war the right to vote. The idea would be that those who fled would have an
intention of returning and they should be given the right to participate in the
democratic process of rebuilding. The 1995 Dayton Agreement which ended the war
in Bosnia and Herzegovina
specified the right of the refugees to vote.
For the
first elections in Bosnia
and Herzegovina in 1996, the external votes
were cast in person. In 23 countries the external voting was observed by the
OSCE. In later elections, the external voting was by post, and the observation
was limited to the counting in centres inside the country. In the first
presidential election held in Afghanistan (2004) refugees in Pakistan and Iran
were allowed to vote (although they were not in the legislative elections in
2005), and during the first elections in Iraq (2005) after the 2003 war there
were extensive arrangements for external voting (see the case study). However,
for the Palestinian elections in 1996 and 2005, the diaspora were not allowed
to vote, partly for practical reasons and partly because of the lack of
Palestinian citizenship and clear documentation to show who is a ‘Palestinian’.
The types
of external voting observers will have to assess include:
- voting in a controlled
environment, that is, in a place where the secrecy of the ballot is
guaranteed by the presence of election staff, and where the vote can be
cast without undue influence or intimidation. This means personal voting
in the embassies or diplomatic missions of the home country; and
- voting in an uncontrolled
environment, without supervision by election staff, and where the secrecy
and security of the vote cannot be guaranteed. This voting can include:
(a) postal voting, where the voter will be issued with a ballot paper and
accompanying documentation which is to be returned by post; (b) electronic
voting (e-voting), for example, over the Internet: after a person’s
identification and right to vote electronically have been verified, the
vote is submitted via a computer program to a central computer for
counting; and (c) voting by proxy.
Postal
voting is the most common method for uncontrolled voting: although voting over
the Internet may become common in future, it is not in use for external voting
anywhere yet. Voting in an uncontrolled environment may be vulnerable to
impersonation, intimidation and fraud, and observation of the process needs to
take such possibilities into account. Voting by proxy is used in some
countries, such as the UK.
Most countries, however, regard the vote as a personal matter. All votes cast
in an uncontrolled environment raise important and controversial issues
regarding the secrecy and security of the vote; see chapter 3 for a more
extensive discussion.
If the
external votes are cast in person, how far voting can be observed is basically
a question of resources. If voting is done by post or electronically via the
Internet, observation becomes more difficult.
