Jeff Fischer

Jeff Fischer has held three election directorships in internationally supervised elections where electoral security was one of his responsibilities. In 1996, he was appointed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to serve as Director General of Elections for the first post-conflict elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1999, Mr. Fischer was appointed by the United Nations (UN) as Chief Electoral Officer for the Popular Consultation for East Timor. And, in 2000, Mr. Fischer received a joint appointment from the UN and OSCE to head the Joint Registration Taskforce in Kosovo and served as the OSCE’s Director of Election Operations for municipal elections held that year. He has also served as an election official in the United States as a Commissioner with the Kansas City Board of Elections (1985 – 1990) and a Commissioner on the Missouri Political Finance Review Commission (1991 – 1992). Mr. Fischer also served as a Senior Advisor to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan and the UN for its audit of the 2014 presidential election results; and as a member of the Experts Verification Commission of the Organization of Americans States (OAS), auditing the results of the 2010 presidential election in Haiti. Mr. Fischer served as a Senior Electoral Advisor for Creative Associates International; in various capacities with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems including as its first Executive Vice President (1993 – 2006); and as an expert consultant with such international organizations and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International IDEA, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and the OAS. Fischer teaches graduate-level courses in the Democracy and Governance Program at Georgetown University on International Electoral Policy and Practice and has also established Electoral Policy Study Group in cooperation with USAID where Georgetown students research policy issues for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Mr. Fischer has been a Visiting Lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, teaching a Policy Workshop on Managing Elections in Fragile States (2007 – 2010, 2014, 2016, 2019) and Elections and Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa (2012), and Digital Disruption of Elections (2021). He is a Senior Advisor to the Sant ’Anna School of Advanced Studies and its on-line Master in Electoral Policy and Administration (MEPA). For MEPA, Mr. Fischer developed the courses on Elections and Voting as Instruments of Governance and Electoral Security and Conflict Prevention. He also serves as a dissertation supervisor for the students.

Thematic Areas of Expertise