Special security measures should be taken by the electoral management body to avoid fraud and mistakes during the process of releasing results.

Only authorised persons should have access to the combined results (prior to public release) and modifications to these results should only be done with proper authorisation.

These measures should be in place both at the counting centres and at the national office of the electoral management body.

Access to the area where the results are being prepared should be limited, but transparency must still be ensured.

The computerised systems used, if any, for combining the results should have safeguards such as passwords, firewall, mirror server, back-ups, etc. No one other than authorised persons should be able to access the computerised systems and change results. These persons should be carefully selected and identified in advance, and they should be required to sign a contract with a confidentiality clause.

Police, armed forces personnel, or private security officers should be available on request by the electoral management body and its electoral officials.

An electoral management body security contact person should be identified prior to voting day and should have all specific information needed if the assistance of security forces is required.

All counting participants, at the national level or at the counting centre, should wear proper identification to avoid any confusion.

Identifying badges or cards should be given to the staff of the electoral management body, the representatives of political parties and candidates, observers, the media, visiting dignitaries, etc. If practical, armed forces personnel may be present in the counting centre and should, as well, be required to wear proper identification. Armed forces could also be outside the counting center to safeguard the votes and be called in by the counting officer if needed.

Providing the Official Provisional and Final Results

Results management system's operational plans often over-look that it must cater for two distinct yet intertwined tabulation and reporting processes. Given the intense interest in the election results from political stakeholders, media and the electorate, EMBs realize that they no longer have the luxury of waiting until the legal results forms arrives and results verified before announcing final results. An EMB’s results system must include mechanisms whereby both provisional and final results are catered for. Most EMBs are therefore cognizant of the importance of releasing timely provisional results, as this will give the election authority sufficient time to process the final results. Equally important, if the release of provisional results is not forthcoming the EMB could soon find itself being accused of altering the results by some parties and candidates. Having said that, it’s instrumental that EMBs are not pressured into releasing results prematurely. The EMBs must give themselves sufficient time to properly transmit, tabulate and check results before releasing both interim and final results. In order to manage such expectations, EMBs must clearly and repeatedly reinforce the expected timeline for release of results during the lead-up to Election Day, as well as comply with the timeline and inform the public of any possible delays and clearly explain the reason for the delay. Thereafter it’s too late.

Given the intense focus on supplying early provisional results, EMBs are sometimes focusing almost exclusively on this process generating interim results at the expense of the final, legally binding, results stream. This could be devastating as in a tight race, the EMB might decide midstream it cannot announce an outright winner, or the need for a second round, before it has verified the provisional results with the actual results forms. Thus, the time lag between provisional and final results shouldn’t be excessive. In some countries, a maximum period of time between Election Day and the publication of certified results is dictated by the legal framework.

The electoral management body should be the only organization announcing and releasing the final official results unless judicial structures have a role in certifying the results. In most cases it should be made clear that the only official source for any results is the electoral management body.

The Role of the Courts

In some countries, the judiciary is only involved in the electoral process after the election when it comes time to take to court offenders of the electoral law or when a judicial recount is needed.

In other jurisdictions, the courts may have a significant role to play in confirming the results of the election; the results only become official once the courts has certified them. Such confirmation should be done as soon as possible in order to avoid political instability and potential delays associated with a transition from a former government to the one elected. As a result, a maximum number of days between the EMB’s announcement of its final results and the certification by the court is often part of the legal framework governing elections.

In some jurisdictions the court may also be directly involved in the count with the electoral management body. This will generally be the case if final approval of the count must come from a judicial structure.

Publishing the Detailed Results

Publishing the Detailed Results

After the final certified results are released many jurisdictions require that detailed voting results be published in the official gazette of the government or another official publication. Best international praxis indicates that EMBs are today publishing results by voting stations online using its own website. Many EMBs scan the actual statement of votes form for each voting station thereby ensures the transparency requirement for an appropriate results management system is adhered to.

Legally, the detailed results are often presented to the legislature, agency, department, or the administrative entity that the electoral management body reports to. A courtesy copy of the published report can be sent to the different political leaders who ran for the election and to all elected candidates. A copy of the report could also be made available on the EMB’s website.

Publishing this detailed report of the election may take several months of preparation and production. Due to financial constrains, in some countries candidates and all other persons, parties, or organization will buy their own copies of the results from the publisher, or obtain an electronic version from the EMB. As a general principle, EMBs should seek to provide data in a format that allows analysis. Providing results from tens of thousands of polling stations, but only doing so in a human-readable format such as PDF, amounts to a less than complete commitment to transparency.

Make the data available in the most generic format possible – such as CSV (comma separated values) text file or similar.

Once the final results are known and publicised, the new government should be sworn in as soon as possible to limit the possible political instability and delays in the transition of one government to another. This can often take a week or more, depending on the type of political system used in the country.

Combining Results to Protect the Secrecy of the Vote

The electoral management body can merge or amalgamate results of several voting stations. This is generally done if the voting procedure was such that it may be possible to identify every person whose vote has gone into a particular ballot box, or if the number of votes in the ballot box is so small that there is a significant risk that almost all the votes will be for one candidate or party.

In such cases, the secrecy of the vote could be compromised. Results should be amalgamated with other voting stations. This can also be done in cases where it appears that the secrecy of individual votes can be secured, but there is real risk arising from the fact that a particular voting station, having voted predominantly in a particular way, could result in retribution to the persons who voted at that voting station.

Mixing the ballots from two or more boxes from different areas, and then attributing all the votes to one ballot box with proper notation in the results of this having been done can mitigate this problem. Such procedures must take place in the counting centre prior to the ballots being counted.

Merging results can also be done for incarcerated voters, absentee, or other categories of voters using special ballots. Since the ballots are usually counted at the head office of the electoral management body, results can easily be merged with other results to protect the secrecy of the vote.

For internal use only, a special notation can be made to keep the audit trail clear.