Se recomienda una mejora en la formación de los miembros de las mesas directivas de las casillas, sobre todo en el uso de las tecnologías mas avanzadas para la compresión del ciudadano. Tales medidas tendrían el potencial de acelerar, aún más, el flujo de votantes en la jornada electoral.

Sería positivo aumentar los esfuerzos para asegurar que se apliquen correctamente las medidas de seguridad en todas las casillas.

Se recomienda que la legislación se enmiende con el objetivo de regular la realización de un recuento en un numero de casillas previamente determinado (muestreo aleatorio) cuando los resultados de las elecciones sean muy parejos. Si el resultado de este muestreo indicara que un recuento total podría afectar los resultados, el IFE debería realizar un recuento total de oficio.

The obligations established in the Electoral Law for the creation of new parties, such as the requirement to have an assembly and a steering board established in every municipality of the country under the supervision of the CSE, should be reconsidered. The establishment of a municipal office in 50% of the municipalities of the country could be sufficient.

The constitutional requirement for political parties to win at least 4% of the valid vote in the national elections in order to maintain their legal personality and participate in future elections should be reduced.

The right to stand for independent candidates and citizens’ associations should be allowed at least for regional and municipal elections.

Transparent and accountable mechanisms to record, disclose and audit the donations to political parties and their expenditure during the electoral campaign should be established. Consideration should be given to the introduction of limits on donations to political parties, as well as limits to their campaign expenditure. Enforcement mechanisms to guarantee adequate public disclosure of parties’ income and expenditures should also be introduced and not limited to campaign periods. Consideration could also be given to reducing the current reimbursement to parties from public funds.

The closing date for registration of Parties and Candidates for a specific election should be closer to the election period than is currently the case, in order to avoid announcements of affiliation changes and long pre-electoral campaign periods. Consideration could be given to allowing the substitution of candidates for the National Assembly who resign, as is foreseen for presidential candidates.

The mechanism to determine the number of deputies elected for each departmental/regional constituency (Art 141 Electoral Law) should be updated. The number should be revised each time there is a national census, or by using updated civil registration figures, to achieve a better proportionality between the population and elected representatives.

The introduction of compensatory seats in the nation-wide constituency could be considered as a mechanism to recuperate the “wasted” votes of those parties that do not win any seats in departmental/regional constituencies

The CSE should be strengthened as an institution. This should include an overhaul of its central office structure. The CSE should approve its own rules of procedures and establish an official organisational structure that responds to criteria of efficiency and transparency. This would include a secretary general with powers of overall coordination among the various directorates.

The Civil Service Law should apply to senior levels of the election administration, in order to guarantee their professionalisation and protect them from arbitrary dismissals and political party pressure.

An equal representation of women at the various levels of the election administration should be encouraged. This process should be initiated with a larger representation at the highest level, and then be promoted by means of a specific policy within the CSE at the various appointment levels.

The CSE should make full use of its regulatory powers in all those specific aspects of a given electoral process that might not be sufficiently explained in the law, in order to
increase consistency and eliminate ambiguity in its interpretations.

The procedures for civil registration should be updated, simplified and standardised in all municipalities. The system of civil registration should be computerised from the outset in all municipalities and placed effectively under the control either of a specialised division of the CSE, or of a different governmental agency. Specific geo-indexing parameters such as settlement divisions or new address codes could be introduced to simplify identification and future updates. A thorough reform of the Citizen Identification Law could regulate the reorganisation of the system.

Each civil registration application should be entered electronically at the municipal level, with a unique number assigned to each entry that can be used later on for every change of residence or status and for other fiscal or administrative purposes. The procedures at municipal level should be defined and supervised by the CSE, and the civil registrars should answer exclusively to the CSE officers rather than to the municipality.

If the civil registration functions are to remain under the responsibility of a specialised division of the CSE, a separate budget should be allocated to it, regardless of the occurrence of elections in a given year. Ideally, the civil registration process should be given equal if not higher attention in non-election years. Specific mechanisms to inform ID card applicants of the progress of their applications should be designed and implemented.

The application, production and distribution of ID cards should be simplified and removed from the control of the political parties’ territorial structures. The distribution of ID cards should take place permanently at the municipal level, ideally in the same office that deals with civil registration.

Voter list verification (giving citizens the opportunity to update or modify their information) should be subject to more rigorous quality assurance checks and should be
given better publicity. It would be more appropriate for emigrants or non-residents to be marked as such in the voter register.

In order to rationalise costs and procedures, consideration should be given to reducing the overall number of polling stations and to increasing the number of staff and voters per polling station.

The filling in of polling station and results forms and the completion of accuracy checks in the filling in of the results forms should be more specifically addressed in the training. Polling station staff should always be provided with calculators.

In case of challenges to polling station results that are substantiated, the results of the polling station should not be annulled, but rather recounted at the CED/CER level. The possibility of a polling station recount should also be introduced at the municipal level

The publication of the preliminary results should be regulated by detailed and transparent rules. The CSE should be obliged by law to publish the preliminary results in their entirety, including the complete polling station breakdown, thus removing the possibility of the CSE deciding arbitrarily how many and which part of the results to be made public. Crucial statistics on voter turnout, number of valid and invalid votes, and the number of polling stations challenged and annulled should also be made public in the publication of preliminary results.

An independent mechanism should be established for the resolution of electoral challenges and appeals. This could mean that such competences are attributed to a specific section of the judiciary or at least to a separate branch of the election administration that deals only with the supervision of the process and the resolution of challenges and appeals.

The CSE should begin to use its authority to require the media to abide by the provisions set out in Articles 87 and 90 of the Electoral Law regarding the use of the media by political parties and the diffusion of electoral propaganda during the electoral campaign. The reasons presented for not enforcing these sections to date should no longer be an excuse for further inaction or omission.