The administrative structure for voting operations needs to effectively translate defined accountabilities for election management, which would normally and properly be defined in legislation or regulations, into task and activity management.
The nature of the electoral management body and the specific social and cultural context of the country will have a significant impact on choices of cost-effective measures for conducting voting.
There is typically a very short time frame between election announcement and voting day in which to deliver voting services. The simpler the organisational structure for the management of voting, the more likely the delivery of quality, consistent service to all voters. Some significant organisational structure issues for voting operations are dealt with below.
Independence of Electoral Management Body
Independent electoral management bodies will generally be able to act in a more swift and decisive way in making decisions on matters affecting voting operations. Where electoral management bodies are politically answerable, political interference in the conduct of voting is always a possibility, with the consequent need for careful consideration of potential contingencies and perhaps some restrictions on the choice of cost-effective methods. Where electoral management bodies represent a balance of political forces, there may be time lags in decision-making. These factors need to be considered in developing administrative time tables and work plans for voting.
Permanence and Professionalism
Permanent electoral management bodies will bring corporate experience and a greater basis for professionalism to voting operations than bodies appointed temporarily to conduct voting. While such permanent bodies are a significant ongoing cost, the benefits in reliability and cost-effectiveness of voting operations are significant, including:
- the assembling of a team of professional staff undergoing continuous training to develop their professional knowledge, management and team skills;
- the ability to undertake preparations for voting, both in planning and in acquisition of the required resources, throughout the whole period between elections, rather than this being compressed into a short, pre-voting day period. (This can both improve the cost-effectiveness of resource acquisition, and, through early implementation of functions such as voting site identification, development and planning of staff recruitment and training programmes and materials and logistics planning, can reduce the pressure on staff and control mechanisms during the election period and hence assist quality control);
- continual development and thorough testing of new systems and procedures to improve voter service and cost-effectiveness of operations.
Centralized or Decentralized Operations
While maintaining a core central presence assists in voting operations planning, the implementation of voting is usually at a local level. Maintaining a permanent local network of electoral management body offices, while an ideal for professionalism and service to voters, is generally not justifiable in cost terms. However, both election preparedness and cost-effectiveness may be enhanced by agency arrangements whereby bodies such as local governments assume responsibility, under central electoral management body supervision, for preparations for voting.
Maintaining some local presence will assist in:
- effective local organization of voting processes, through local knowledge of potential voting locations, transport routes, recruitment possibilities, and the characteristics of voters in the area;
- ongoing election preparations at a local level, in developing local budget and materials needs, maintenance of locally stored equipment and pre-packaging of materials;
- providing an experienced network of staff for local management of voting.
While the ability to maintain a local presence will enhance effective preparations for voting, whether it is appropriate for a particular environment will depend on costs, and the permanent capacity of the electoral management body to manage the activities of such a network.
Delegation of Powers: Local or Central Control
There are two basic questions critical to voting operations management:
- Who is responsible for the implementation of the various activities of voting in particular electoral areas?
- Where are the responsible staffs located?
How these questions are resolved will have a very large impact on the appropriate methods of planning and implementing voting operations. The first question would normally be answered in the legal framework. It would be normal, for elections based on electing representatives for small individual electoral districts, that a designated post or posts--whether they are known as returning officers, electoral district managers, local electoral commissions or similar title--be accountable for the conduct of voting within an electoral district. Where, for particular elections, countries, provinces or states form an electoral district as a whole, legislation may also specify the breakdown of this into electoral administrative areas, possibly based on other institutional boundaries such as local government areas, for the purposes of election administration.
The location of administrators may also be specified in the legal framework or subject to state policy, in requiring that an electoral administration office be established, for each electoral district or area, within the boundaries of that district. However, it may be more cost-effective to defer such decisions to administrative discretion.
Depending on such issues as geographic size, voter population and infrastructure of electoral districts, it may well be more effective use of available staff to manage more than one electoral district from a single location.
In determining the location of administration offices and division of powers between local and central election management offices, the following factors need to be considered:
Voting is a localized, dispersed, activity: Management of voting implementation at a local level can provide faster response to incipient problems, provide the benefits of local knowledge of the area, and break voting management tasks down into more easily controllable geographic area responsibilities. Overly centralized management of voting processes can lead to inefficiencies through long and more complex supply and decision-making lines, and concentration of decision-making powers in a single or few areas. Totally centralized management places great reliance on a very high level of performance in a single location in a high stress environment. Systems failures will be more difficult to isolate, communications with a multiplicity of locations more difficult to control, and supervisory and quality control functions will be under pressure.
Administrative efficiency: While direct implementation of all voting activities from a central point is likely to lead to inefficiencies, there may not be a need to have a voting operations administration office in each electoral district. Depending on the quality of local management available, the characteristics of the areas to be served, the ability to maintain service to voters and the efficiencies that can be gained through more effective use of staff, equipment and premises, one local administration office may be able to serve a number of electoral districts. However such situations are more likely to be the exception than the rule. Potential co-locations of local offices each need to be considered on their merits.
The cost-effectiveness, integrity, and enhanced voter service, provided by consistency of procedures: In environments where total control of election management is in the hands of local bodies, inconsistencies in procedures--forms design, methods of voting, voting station equipment, services and layouts--can increase materials and equipment costs, provide wide variations in voter service standards, allow inconsistencies in application of integrity standards, and require more localized, fragmented and expensive voter information campaigns.
Centrally-managed procedural and policy development, overall planning, bulk materials acquisitions and service quality control, combined with local management of implementation of voting operations, will generally provide a mix that best serves voter service and cost-effectiveness of voting operations.
Communications Structure
Voting operations take place in a fast-moving environment, and generally under very tight deadlines. It is imperative that administrative structures allow, and are equipped to provide swift and accurate transmission of instructions and information from the central electoral management body to regional or local administration offices, and then to voting stations and counting locations. Similarly, feedback and data from election staff in the field needs to be swiftly communicated to the central electoral management body.
In developing administrative structures for voting, chains of command should be kept short and simple to promote effective information flow. Excessive steps--such as from central, to regional, to area, to electoral district to voting station management--should be avoided, as they will slow down information transfer and increase the potential for messages to be distorted. "Flat" management and communication structures that allow direct information flow and control from the central electoral management body to local electoral district/area offices and back would generally improve communication effectiveness.
Administrative and Technical Guidance
Voting operations administrators, no less than workers in voting stations, require guidance in both their general administration role and in the specific actions that they need to undertake to ensure that legislative, policy and procedural requirements are followed, and that voters receive a consistent quality of service.
Responsibility Structure
The cost and technical requirements of maintaining permanent electoral structures capable of internal delivery of all election materials and services is such that this is not generally a viable proposition. Thus electoral management bodies will rely to some extent on other state agencies or commercial or non-commercial contractors for the provision of vital components of voting operations.
The structure of responsibilities for provision of voting operations materials and services will vary according to capacities both within the electoral management body and within the country as a whole. The basic role of the electoral management body in voting operations is to provide effective management and ensure their freedom, fairness and integrity. This may be achievable cost-effectively through strict oversight of, rather than actual implementation of, many voting operations functions, particularly in more developed countries with highly sophisticated and competitive professional sectors.
Where there is a multiplicity of bodies involved in voting operations, accountabilities, responsibilities and inter-organizational dependencies need to be defined in contractual arrangements that contain clear performance standards, which are monitored by the electoral management body and swiftly enforced. The time frames for voting operations and the immutable nature of the voting day deadline do not allow for long-running disputes over responsibilities, or late discovery that required actions have not been undertaken.
Electoral Management Bodies
The nature and composition of the electoral management body will influence the location of voting operations responsibilities:
- permanent or temporary
- independent of or controlled by executive government
- centralized or decentralized
- comprised of independent members or interest representational members
In many cases electoral management bodies may not be free to determine these responsibility structures. Overall public sector policies on service delivery may limit their ability to adopt cost-effective solutions.
In many environments the electoral management body's perceived advantages in providing transparent, impartial, and professional service--where other state agencies or the private sector are compromised by perceptions of bias, lack of professionalism or corruption--means that no matter what the cost or efficiency imperatives, it would be dangerous for election integrity to outsource locally any voting operations functions.
There may be electoral tasks that affect voting operations that, as a matter of state policy, are undertaken by other bodies. Registration of voters and compilation of voters’ lists, for example, may be the function of another state agency whose skills and resources for dealing with population data give them effectiveness advantages in this field. Such arrangements require vigilance on the part of electoral management bodies to ensure that a timely, professional and accurate product is received.
Additionally, where these tasks are undertaken by other bodies they must maintain transparency, with provisions for monitoring and observation, as though they were undertaken by the electoral management body.
While it is not possible to cover in this brief summary all possible responsibility models, it is useful to look at what the core voting operations functions of electoral management bodies might be, and what voting operations responsibilities could, given a neutral social environment, reside elsewhere if cost-effective.
Core Voting Operations Functions
In assessing what the electoral management body's core voting operations functions are, it is necessary to determine how the electoral management body adds value to voting operations processes through expertise, public perceptions of integrity, and resource advantages. These include:
- the active oversight, coordination and quality control of all materials and services required for voting operations;
- development of all voting operations policies and procedures;
- development and monitoring of all voting operations calendars and schedules;
- specifications for design and production of all voting operations material and equipment;
- selection of voting sites;
- liaison with political participants, including advice on administrative requirements;
- liaison with other electoral stakeholders, such as civil society organizations and the media, including advice on administrative procedures
- management of voting stations, including determination of staffing and materials schedules, and managing voting day operations;
- management of ballot counts;
- determination and announcement of election results;
- monitoring of integrity of voting processes.
Other voting operations functions that do not involve an election-specific skill base could be contracted elsewhere, in accordance with the electoral management body's available expertise, resources, relative costs and performance abilities. Such contracting does not abrogate any of the responsibility of the electoral management body to ensure that these functions are completed fully in accordance with the principles of voting operations (see Guiding Principles of Voting Operations).
Given the time and quality-critical nature of voting operations, the levels of reliability and quality of service that can be provided are vital factors. In determining whether functions can be outsourced, these factors must outweigh any potential cost savings.
Functions That Could Be Outsourced
Some likely or possible functions that could be undertaken by outside organisations include:
Security: Contracted to specialist regional, national or international policing, or if necessary military agencies
Procurement: To increase perceptions of transparency, or in line with auditing requirements, procurement may be placed in the hands of official tender boards
Voter information and education: Materials design and production, media placement and information delivery may be better handled by specialist communications agencies, and assisted by using community bodies.
Materials design for forms and ballot papers: This responsibility may be better placed with communications and production specialists, working to strict electoral management body specifications.
Materials production: While low volume forms may be effectively produced in-house, maintaining large scale production facilities for high volume forms and other voting operations equipment and materials is unlikely to be an effective use of electoral management body resources.
Selection of staff for voting stations and ballot counting centres: This is an intensive task at a time of other competing demands on electoral management bodies resources.
Given the dispersed and labour-intensive nature of voting operations, this function may be better left to recruitment experts working to strict, monitored selection standards.
Development of training material and implementation of training sessions for voting station staff: This function may be more cost-effectively handled by utilising existing educational sector resources working to electoral management body specifications.
Electoral officers payroll management: Voting day will see a massive increase in electoral management body staff. To maintain, for these infrequent events, in-house staff payment facilities capable of handling this increase may not be an effective use of electoral management body resources.
Voting site mapping: The census bureau or other agencies with existing geographic information systems (GIS) resources may be highly qualified for mapping.
Out-of-country voting operations: This function may be more effectively handled by contracting existing resources in external diplomatic, trade or other government missions, where these are publicly perceived as providing an impartial service.
Development of computer software and systems: Outside specialist companies can provide this service to electoral management body specifications.
Operation of computer hardware platforms: Given high investment levels required for computer systems that will be used infrequently for elections, use of systems and networks from outside service providers can be a cost effective alternative, as long as reliability, access and integrity can be guaranteed to the required standards.
Logistics and storage: Similarly to materials and equipment production, the maintenance by the electoral management body of permanent in-house transport and warehousing facilities (or even undertaking short-term fleet or storage management) sufficient for voting operations may not to be an effective use of internal resources.
In considering outsourcing of any of these non-core voting operations functions, a longer-term view of how developing any dependency on external service providers will affect the future reliability, quality and costs of voting operations needs to be carefully assessed. The advantages of keeping the following areas in-house, for example, need to be carefully weighed against benefits of external supply:
- internal skill development;
- consistency in service delivery framework (rather than developing fresh relationships with external service suppliers each election);
- the internal ethos of delivery to deadlines.
Development of in-house capabilities within the electoral management body may better meet the longer term needs.
Where voting operations functions are contracted out, it needs to be determined whether these responsibilities could be better undertaken by:
- other government sector bodies
- private sector commercial contractors
- non-government community organisations
- international organisations
