Calendars and time lines incorporate work plans in an easily digestible summary, showing key voting operations activities and their dates, deadlines, and periods for implementation. They are necessary reference and monitoring tools.
Calendars for voting operations need to be relevant for their intended audience. Prepare different calendars and time lines containing different levels of detail where necessary. For example calendars and time lines prepared for internal management use and those for public or political participant information are not always the same. Clearly distinguish between administrative deadlines and legal dates and phases Administrative deadlines may be missed without necessarily affecting the integrity of the election; legal deadlines cannot.
Generic Format
As with work plans, draft time lines can be prepared even if the date of voting day is not known. This can be done on the basis of an administrative assessment of the days required to undertake particular tasks and shown in the form of "days before" and "days after" any points defined in electoral legislation. For example, identifying task deadlines in terms of "voting day minus x number of days."
Draft timetables need to be flexible and amended if necessary, particularly where the legal definition of significant periods is non-existent or variable. Where there are flexible deadlines in the legal framework, political considerations, rather than election administrator’s needs, are likely to be the determinant for government decisions on time periods available.
Deadlines and Periods Defined in Legislation
In its simplest form election and voting operations calendars are an overview of legally defined dates, deadlines and periods for voting operations activities, the basics of implementing voting.
Legally defined issues that may be included in calendars and time lines are likely to include:
• period or deadline for voters to register for the election or change registration details;
• period for official review and finalisation of the national voters register;
• deadline for registration of political parties;
• periods and deadlines for nomination of candidates and groups and for announcement of accepted nominations;
• the campaign period;
• voting day(s);
• deadlines for commencement and completion of vote counting;
• deadlines for announcement of results;
• period for filing challenges to election results.
Depending on the election system, other possible items could include:
• deadline for determination of voting station locations;
• period for nominations checking and challenge of candidates and groups participating in the election;
• deadlines for supply of materials for voting stations;
• any period for early voting;
• deadlines for receipt of completed mail ballots;
• deadlines for certification of election results;
• deadlines for prosecution of election offences;
• deadlines for reporting of election contributions and/or expenses by parties and candidates.
This legal time frame calendar is the basis from which all voting operations planning and implementation activity evolves. It is insufficient on its own as a reference guide for voting operations activity. Each of these legal reference points may involve multiple administrative actions. An effective legal time frame calendar needs to:
• be a combination of these legal time frames with their consequent key administrative action periods and deadlines;
• keep information in the overall voting operations timetable manageable;
• include the key administrative deadlines and time periods are necessary for overall management control and prompting;
• develop detailed time lines for each voting operations activity as lower level documents for use by individual activity project managers and their staff.
Administrative Timetables
While different election systems will have different specific voting operations time line requirements, the key dates, time periods, and deadlines for completion needed for effective management control would include
General administrative issues:
• legal and regulatory frameworks and procedures;
• policies for determining staffing and equipping voting stations;
• needs assessments;
• security plans;
• election systems and procedures tests and simulations;
• budgets and budget review.
Voter information:
• information plan;
• materials production;
• information campaign phase;
• information distribution schedules (via mass media or other means).
Parties and candidates:
• registration of political parties;
• party and candidate briefing completion;
• nomination of candidates and parties;
• objection to nomination of candidates and parties
• announcement of accepted nominations;
• the campaign period;
Voting locations:
• voting and counting centres;
• reviewing and determining voting site equipment and materials needs.
Staffing and training:
• staffing requirements;
• commencement and completion of polling staff recruitment;
• training plan finalisation;
• training of trainers and then of polling staff.
Voters register
• registration of voters or change in registration information;
• official review and finalisation of voter’s register data;
• printing of certified voter’s registers for use in voting stations.
Ballots:
• finalisation of ballot content;
• printing ballots;
• voting machine installations (if applicable);
• voting and count computer programming (if applicable).
Voting operations materials and equipment:
• materials production plans
• materials and equipment specifications and procurement plans
• review of voting location/counting centre and other materials and equipment needs
• placement of orders for materials
• determination of allocations of voting site equipment
• production, review and repair of existing stocks for ballot boxes and voting compartments
• production of general voting operations period materials, early voting materials and voting day materials
Logistics:
• completion of logistical plan;
• finalisation of logistics contracts;
• completion of deliveries of materials/equipment from suppliers;
• packaging materials and equipment for voting stations and counting centres;
• distribution of materials and equipment to voting and counting locations;
• supply, test and distribution of communications equipment;
• return of materials;
• sorting of returned materials for secure storage or destruction;
• disposal of unwanted materials.
Voting period:
• voting day(s);
• periods of early voting;
• deadlines for receipt of mail and absentee votes.
Counting and results:
- commencement and completion of ballot counts;
- validity checking of special votes;
- announcement of results;
- lodging of challenges to election results;
- investigation and prosecution of election offences.
