Observing
external voting may be difficult as a result of the reduced transparency of the
process and the costs involved. Collection of first-hand representative
evidence from all steps of the process may be impossible. In principle
the observation should take the following steps:
- an assessment of the political
environment in which external voting is implemented. Is there a general
agreement on the terms for external voting and is there general confidence
in the process?;
- assessment of the legal
framework and the checks and balances worked into the system;
- assessment of the pre-election
campaign. The election laws of the country will not apply, but it would
still be of interest to assess what is being done to help voters make an
informed choice from abroad;
- if the voting is done in
person, observing the voting, reconciliation, packing and sealing of the voting
material on the basis of a reasonable sample. The assessment of how big
the sample needs to be would depend on whether one wants to draw
conclusions about the external voting as a separate process in its own
right, which would require good coverage, or whether the external voting
is only a small part of the overall assessment of the elections;
- if the voting is done by post,
observing the verification of the lists of external electors, the
distribution of voting material, the reception and verification of the
same, and the count; and
- if the voting is electronic,
assessment of the process of implementing the system, including the rules
for verifying the identity of the voters, audit trails, and the validation
performed by the EMB.
All
external voting constitutes a challenge from an observation point of view.
Domestic observation is often based on wide coverage rather than sampling, and
local NGOs may therefore want to cover all polling places. However, domestic
observer organizations may not have the resources needed for proper observation
of voting in embassies and consular offices (although a worldwide network of
Indonesians, mainly students, succeeded in achieving wide-ranging coverage of
voting at Indonesian embassies in the 1999 transitional elections).
International missions may have an easier task in terms of resources to observe
external voting if it takes place in a controlled environment, not least
because the sample may be more limited.
Postal and
Internet voting would be more complicated to observe. The first problem is the
identity of the voter. In Bosnia
and Herzegovina a number of attempts to
impersonate postal voters allegedly living abroad were exposed in 1998 and
2000. In the case of Internet voting some of the security problems may be
solved in the future, but the basic paper trail—the ballot paper—will be
missing. In paper-based voting it is always possible to order a recount, and
the actual voting will have been followed by observers and party agents.
The most
important condition for reliable voting in an uncontrolled environment is
general trust in the EMB. Even external voting in a controlled environment
requires such trust, since full observation is difficult for parties and NGOs.
The
political environment
External
voting in transitional democracies is often controversial, either for political
or for technical reasons, as discussed above in relation to Croatia. In Zimbabwe, the opposition sought a
more liberal ruling for external voting, possibly believing that President
Robert Mugabe would have less support among those who have left the country. On
the other hand, the same opposition criticized the implementation of the rather
limited external voting for its lack of transparency and control.
The key
issues for observers to assess are the political environment under which
external voting is being conducted and the independence and integrity of the
EMB. In particular the arrangements for external voting should be subject to a
high degree of consensus, since the transparency of external voting will almost
inevitably be less than that of in-country voting. Any dictate from a political
majority is likely to attract charges of fraud and manipulation unless the
administrators’ integrity is beyond doubt.
Personal
voting in a controlled environment
External
voting may be difficult to observe at all stages. If the voting is done in
person in a controlled environment (such as embassies or consular offices),
observation may be possible but will be expensive. If the resources are
available, the observation of this kind of voting will be rather similar to the
observation of in-country voting, where a sample is chosen for collection of
first-hand evidence and the process is observed, from the opening to the close
of voting to the reconciliation and sealing of the ballot material. However,
there may be significant differences from the observation of in-country voting.
Observers may stay in the same polling station throughout the voting, rather
than moving from one polling station to another during election day. If the
count does not take place in the polling station but in counting centres in the
country itself, questions of the integrity of votes in transit arise. In such
cases it becomes a task for observers to follow the processes of packing and
sealing, reconciliation, and reception at the counting centre, as well as the
count itself.
Postal
voting
If voting
is done by post, the actual voting may not be observed, but other processes
such as the maintenance of the registers of external electors, the form of the
letters sent out to the voters, the documentation required to accompany the
ballot paper on its return, the checking of whether ballot papers are genuine
and the count may be observed. However, the process may be spread over a period
of time and may therefore be difficult to observe throughout.
Electronic
voting
If the
external voting is done electronically, for example over the Internet, it will
be an even bigger challenge to observe all steps of the process. Confidence in
the process will depend on the level of trust in the IT system, which in turn
to a great extent is dependent on confidence in the EMB.
IT systems
should meet a number of criteria, such as being reliable, user-friendly, secure
(meaning that they can resist deliberate attacks from outside and inside at all
times) and verifiable (meaning that they can be checked). IT systems may be
manipulated from inside and from outside. Insiders may build in functions which
may change the result in a certain direction. Such manipulation may in theory
be conducted by the election administration itself. In transitional
democracies, if the general trust in the election administration is low, an
electronic voting system may add to the lack of confidence in the electoral
process.
Full validation
will be next to impossible for any observation mission to perform. One should
therefore be very careful not to give the impression that an independent
validation of the system has been carried out even though IT experts may have
assessed parts of the process. Bringing in such expertise may give a false
impression that the systems have been validated against international
standards.
In
particular, manipulation from inside is in practice almost impossible for an
observation mission to assess. Even if the observation mission has IT expertise
available, the experts should concentrate on the process which the EMB has
carried out when acquiring the systems, rather that pretending to carry out an
independent validation of the system. Such assessment of the process should
include:
- the choice of supplier,
including the requirements for certification against recognized standards
for quality and security;
- the validation of the
requirements specification and overall design;
- the use of quality auditing
during implementation; and
- the strategies for testing the
system.
In
addition, the audit trails and all possibilities for recovering data in the
event of a failure should be assessed. However, the main audit trail in
traditional elections, namely the ballot paper, will be missing. It will
therefore not be possible to reconstruct the results on the basis of a ‘paper
trail’. This is why observers need to put much emphasis on the assessment of
whether there is a general consensus on the introduction of Internet-based voting
and on the integrity of the EMB. A prototype of the IT system may have been
validated by the EMB, and it is only the EMB which can ensure that the system
being used for the elections is actually the validated system, without any
manipulation from election administrators.
