Aims
The prime focus of electoral management and its most
publicly visible activity is to organize and operate facilities that will
provide an opportunity for all eligible persons to participate, through voting,
in the choice of their representatives in their institutions of governance.
As voting is generally a geographically dispersed
activity which often has to be organized and implemented within very tight time
frames, providing a cost-effective voting service for all eligible voters
whilst maintaining high standards of integrity, security and professionalism is
a major challenge to electoral management bodies.
Key Issues
In any electoral environment there are similar key
issues for which effective solutions have to be found, if voting operations are
to promote public confidence in the integrity and professionalism of electoral
management, and acceptance of election results. Significant amongst these are:
What are the administrative considerations that, along with legal frameworks, provide the basis for an electoral
management body's planning of voting operations? As a highly complex
combination of processes, voting operations require careful planning and trials
of proposed solutions before implementation.
What are appropriate methods of providing voter
information that will reach the various sectors of the voting population and
stimulate participation in voting. As genuine participation rises, so can
perceptions of election legitimacy.
Voter information programmes play a major role in
encouraging participation through providing accessible information on where,
when and how to vote. Special attention may need to be paid to methods for
informing sectors of the population, such as minority cultural or language
groups, the young or first time voters, the aged, or those in remote areas who
may not have access to mainstream information sources.
What are the most suitable Voting
Preparations? What range and
mix of facilities for voting, from voting at the local voting station through
special provisions for voting in a particular manner, for example, by mail,
absentee, before general election day or, in particular locations, in remote
areas or institutions, provides all eligible voters the opportunity to vote in
a cost-effective manner?
What are effective means for determining the location
of Voting
Sites, and ensuring that
they are designed to promote voter service and properly provisioned, through
implementation of effective Logistics strategies?
Promoting accessibility and efficiency of voting
processes, through identification of appropriate sites for and capacities of
voting stations, is a major ingredient in implementing a successful election.
What are appropriate types, designs, and quantities of
election Materials
And Equipment Voting is a
massive information transfer exercise, which demands effective materials and
equipment solutions to ensure that information is transferred accurately, on
time, and by means that are readily understood.
Complexity of materials or inappropriate reliance on
technology, can have a significant negative effect on the effectiveness with
which information is transferred and processed.
What are the ways to ensure that voting stations are
manned by sufficient, well-trained staff. National elections are often the most
extensive recruitment and training exercise undertaken in a country (See Recruitment
and Training of Voting Station Staff )
Staff costs are generally a significant proportion of
overall election costs and a major area where attention to effective procedures
can result in cost savings.
Training of voting operations staff is often an
overlooked but vital factor in ensuring that voting procedures are properly and
efficiently implemented.
What are cost-effective means of ensuring that voting
operations have a high level of integrity, in materials production and
handling, voting procedures and in providing an appropriate level of security
for all aspects of the electoral process, Adequate measures to deter voting
fraud, and to enable participants in the election process--voters, officials,
political activists and candidates--can participate without fear of
intimidation or harm are to election integrity.
How to implement work practices and procedures for
voting hours operations that will provide a high service level to
voters when they turn out to vote, in a cost-effective manner? Different
election systems will place different procedural requirements on voting station
activities. However there are basic elements in providing service to voters
that transcend system differences:
- maintaining an
orderly, speedy flow of voters through the voting station;
- conducting accurate
checks that voters are eligible to vote;
- issuing and
accurately accounting for voting material;
- assisting voters
who need further information or assistance to vote;
- strictly
maintaining voting secrecy;
- addressing
complaints and objections from voters and party and candidate representatives.
What is the role of party and candidate agents and the
functions of independent election observation in monitoring voting operations
processes to provide an external check that these are implemented fairly and
with integrity? With increased use of independent observation as a method of
evaluating election processes and validating elections it is important that
observer activity is undertaken from a sound basis.
What are the best ways to ensure that there is
continuous improvement in voting operations management, through careful
assessment and evaluation of voting operations and their frameworks, policies
and practices?
The objective of this topic area is to provide some
guidance as to the considerations and alternatives with regard to these and
subsidiary issues.
Service Provision
Implementing voting operations is similar to managing
a high volume, complex production process. A large number and variety of inputs
from many different sources have to be melded into a high quality product on an
immutable date.
Electoral administrators will be under great pressure
to produce by the required date, the core value of voting operations--providing
a cost-effective "service" to voters to enable them to exercise their
democratic right to vote freely and fairly--is the most important
consideration.
Solutions Appropriate to the Environment
Legal frameworks, administrative procedures and work
practices for voting operations are highly environment specific, a product of
both cultural and physical characteristics and administrative and
infrastructure capacities.
Good practices or cost-effective solutions for voting
operations in a specific environment may not be appropriate for translation to
other environments.
These few examples illustrate this important point:
- systems based on
high levels of technology may be effective (and expected by the voting public)
in highly developed environments, yet provide ineffective solutions where there
is insufficient local support or an insufficient infrastructure base to sustain
their operations;
- low cost disposable
voting equipment may be effective in dry weather, low security risk
environments, but inappropriate for use in wet/humid environments or high
security risk situations;
- extreme involvement
of state security forces in voting operations security may be appropriate in
high risk situations where security forces are accepted by the voting public as
non-partisan, yet be highly inappropriate where there is little assessed security
risk to voting operations, or where these forces have a history of politically
partisan activity.
Hence this Voting Operations topic area focuses more
on the available alternatives, and the factors that require careful
consideration in determining what are good, cost-effective solutions for a
particular environment.
It attempts to identify those good or essential
practices for maintaining voting operations integrity that can be translated
into any environment.
