The procedures
for external voting
There are
four basic options for the procedure for external voting:
- voting
by proxy;
- personal voting—voting in
person in diplomatic missions or military bases;
- postal
voting; and
- electronic
voting.
The
advantages of proxy voting are that it is technically simple and does not involve
the huge financial and administrative costs that are customary in elections
held outside the state territory. It does, however, have one problematic
feature: the proxy could use this procedure to obtain an additional vote and
thus infringe the principle of equal suffrage, with the electoral authorities
being unable to intervene.
The main
advantage of voting in diplomatic missions is that there is a highly
transparent electoral process, supervised by diplomatic staff. However, they
must be, and be perceived to be, independent and unbiased. Moreover, in some
countries getting to the nearest embassy or consulate may be a problem,
especially for citizens of those states that have few diplomatic missions in
those foreign countries or in countries where the infrastructure is poor.
Oversight issues also need to be considered with voting at military bases
abroad.
It is
clearly easier to organize postal voting than to establish polling stations in
all diplomatic missions worldwide, but the transparency of voting by post is
not so high as when the vote is cast in person in a consulate under the
observation of state officials (problems of ‘family voting’, for instance, have
been known to arise); moreover, postal services may be slow and unreliable.
Whether postal voting is more or less suitable than voting in diplomatic
missions will depend to a great extent on the context, such as the
infrastructure of those foreign countries where external voting is to be held.
The costs associated with postal voting are generally lower than those for
personal voting because the management structure can be centralized for postal
voting. However, due to timelines, it may be necessary to use courier services
to move the ballot papers to a central point in each country for mailing, and
also to return them for counting. Costs for these services are high but they
ensure timely delivery. The local mailing costs are also high because the
package contains ballot papers, a series of envelopes, instructions, candidate
lists and so on.
Thus there
is no ‘best procedure’ for external voting. The EMB will have to consider the
procedure that best meets the needs of its electorate.
Timelines
The
planning process is made difficult by the particular features of external
voting. However, if there is early planning and careful preparation, the
process will naturally parallel that of the election in-country. For external
voting, however, extra time is required at the registration and voting stages,
especially if the external electors are widely distributed geographically, as
table 5.2 shows. A short election period can effectively exclude external
voting, and is indeed sometimes used for that purpose (e.g., in Sierra Leone
2002, the timeline was one of the reasons for excluding external voting).
One of the
pre-election tasks that can be time-consuming is the negotiation and signing of
a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with each country that will have external
registration and voting.The MOU is the basis for all the arrangements,
assistance and needs of the EMB in that country. When several countries are
involved, a delayed MOU with one or more can jeopardize the process. This
happened in the 2005 Iraqi election, with the last MOU being signed just four
weeks before the election.
The
managers of the external voting must be an integral part of the EMB’s
management and planning team so that all the players are aware of the special
problems to be faced and the timelines. This is particularly important if the
external voting is being administered by an agency outside the EMB of the
country for which the election is being held. The fact that there is external
voting impacts on every step of the process—from procurement and printing to
distribution of the ballot papers, and from training of election workers and voter
education to procedures. Only by working closely together can the internal and
external voting be consistent and function well and efficiently.
The
campaign period will need special attention because candidates and political
parties may not have the resources to reach external electors. The EMB may have
to print and distribute information about the candidates and political parties
to these electors, particularly if it is a postal vote. Although the campaign
period would be the same as that for the in-country campaign, the time needed
for preparation of materials has to be considered. Timelines will be affected
differently depending on the locations of external electors, on the method of
registration and on the process for voting. Technology is offering new options
and electronic methods of voting.
Costing and budgeting
External
voting can add considerably to the costs of an election. The costs of external
voting will vary with the prevailing conditions. Once a decision has been made
to have external voting, it is necessary to be aware of where extra funds will
be needed and what the actual costs will be. In transitional elections, if
international donors are involved, they will want oversight of detailed costing
and budgets. All the costing factors must be known early in the process so that
a realistic budget can be presented to governments and donors. When programmes
are established well in advance within a recognized structure, they are likely
to be less costly.
The extra
costs may be a reason to limit the extent the external voting. For instance,
the option of external voting may be offered only where the number of
registered external electors exceeds a certain threshold (e.g. Ukraine in
2004) or only in countries where the country holding the election has an
embassy or consulate. In some cases, decision makers may determine that the
challenges of external voting are too costly and insurmountable against tight
timetables. This has been the case in a number of post-conflict elections.
Indeed, in the 2005 Iraqi elections, the United Nations initially advised
against external voting due to the complexity of such an operation. However,
the Iraqi political parties advocated strongly for external voting and the
Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) ultimately (in November 2004)
decided to incorporate external voting.
External
voting programme costs might include:
- security—of persons, locations,
materials, events. Special security arrangements may be needed if there is
a perceived risk for the voters and/or ballot papers during the process;
- staffing—including recruitment,
salaries, training;
- office space (it may also be
necessary to administer the external voting from an office outside the
country if there are communications or other infrastructure problems
internally);
- travel—for oversight and
administrative staff;
- training. Special training
materials and programmes will be needed for both external registration and
the external voting itself;
- the
electoral registration programme;
- election materials—the printing
of ballot papers, the installation of voting booths and so on;
- the transport of materials.
This can be a major expense, depending on the number of countries
involved. It will often be necessary to use couriers in order to meet
timelines (e.g. for returning the ballot papers from external voting if
they are to be counted in-country);
- the cost of registration,
polling and office locations;
- information materials and
distribution/media. Special communication programmes will be needed to
reach external electors with information and to raise awareness about the
procedures for registration and voting, and this may involve media costs
in several countries;
- communications—constant
communication is needed between the EMB and its external operation;
- observation—The EMB may want to
provide its own observers for the external registration and voting or it
may want to help political party representatives attend these events; and
- implementing
partner organizations’ costs.
Many of the
basic election costs for items such as procurement and printing will be
included in the general election budget (e.g. the number of ballot papers to be
printed will include internal and external electors).
If a large
number of countries and a large number of electors are involved, negotiations
can be started early to involve the diplomatic community, national EMBs and
where relevant international agencies in those countries. It may be possible to
borrow much of the polling station equipment locally and local election
officials may assist in the preparations in each country, but an agreement will
need to be reached with the local or national EMB. This assistance will vary
greatly from country to country and will need to be negotiated separately. In Bosnia and Herzegovina,
international support was crucial. ‘Most of the countries hosting Bosnian
refugees were sufficiently affluent and politically stable to permit, and even
fund, election activities on their soil. The same cannot be expected of host
countries in other regions’ (Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe, Refugee Election Steering Group 1997: 61). Where the number of external
electors is small (e.g. diplomats, workers and travellers), the embassy of the
country concerned can usually handle the arrangements without input by the
local EMBs.
The Iraq external
voting programme was the most expensive in history. Much of the costs in both
Iraq and Afghanistan—particularly in Iraq—can be attributed to security
requirements, although another factor in the case of Iraq was directly related
to the institutional arrangements that were put in place to organize and
conduct the external voting programme within a very short period of time: the
entire external voting programme was contracted out to the International
Organization for Migration (IOM), resulting in an organizational overhead being
charged for the whole programme. The cost of external voting for Iraq in
the December 2005 election, organised mainly by the IECI and Iraqi
servants, was considerably lower than in the January election, organised with
the assistance of international partners. East Timor’s external voting
programme for its 1999 referendum on independence cost a fraction of what the
programmes in Iraq and Afghanistan
have cost. It registered about 6,220 electors in six countries and external
voter turnout was 96.5 per cent.
Breaking
external voting programmes down into parts, with the EMB of the home country
itself contracting out directly for smaller pieces, such as the printing of
ballot papers, can significantly reduce overall costs. Costs will be higher
when external voting programmes have to establish an electoral register for the
first time or to reconstruct a significantly flawed one. Other methods of
reducing costs include eliminating the production of new identity documents.
Most costs
are borne by a combination of the country of origin, the international
community, and in a more limited way the host countries, but other costs can be
borne by the voters themselves. Voters often pay their own travel fees
associated with registration and voting. Depending on the election timetable,
voters may need to make two trips, one to register and a second to cast their
vote. These travel costs can be a significant obstacle to participation,
particularly where eligible electors have to travel over large distances, and
can result in low external voter turnout. For the January 2005 Iraqi elections,
the costs for electors to travel to register and then again to vote were
prohibitively high, particularly in countries such as Sweden and the United
States (where an estimated 10 per cent of external votes were cast) where
there were only a limited number of polling and registration sites. The Danish
Government subsidized the travel of voters to participate in the Iraqi external
voting programme, but most host countries did not provide such support.
Budget
issues can produce creative and innovative solutions to some of the problems of
external voting. In areas where large numbers of refugees live in close
proximity, volunteers from refugee groups and other community or civic groups
who have the necessary language skills could handle much of the education and
training activities. In some cases it may be possible to draw on these groups
to provide election officials. The expatriate community often suggests other
cost-saving measures (although there could be a risk of these suggestions being
biased).
Naturally,
any financial costs should be considered alongside the non-financial costs of
not conducting external voting, such as the implications for the consolidation
of democracy, peace and stability, or national reconciliation, particularly in
post-conflict societies. In some cases, the costs of not
conducting out-of-country voting can in the long run far exceed the costs of
any single external voting programme.
