International election observation has become an important mechanism to help ensure election integrity in countries undergoing a democratic transition or in post-conflict societies.
International observation has also become a useful learning opportunity for national election officials and participants. The idea of using the indelible ink in the 1999 Indonesian elections to deter multiple voting, came from an Indonesian observer who saw the process being used in the 1998 Cambodian elections. That observer later became one of the Indonesian Electoral Commissioners. 306
According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), international observation has 'become a common feature of electoral operations undertaken by the international community and today enjoys almost universal acceptance as a means of contributing to voter confidence and assessing the relative legitimacy of an electoral process and its outcome.' 307
When international observation is used for integrity purposes, there is usually an issue with the freeness or fairness of that election. For international observation to be an effective detector and deterrent of integrity problems, it needs to be appropriate and adapted to the type of electoral system and elections it is covering. Elections in a post-conflict country, such as Bosnia, require a much different kind of observation than does an election held in a country undergoing electoral reform, such as Mexico.
As a mechanism to ensure integrity, international observation should cover the electoral process, rather than focus on a specific event such as polling. It also requires trained and qualified observers. One of the most typical complaints made against international observation is that it has become electoral tourism, with either politically important, or professionally inexperienced, observers arriving a couple of days before voting. These persons 'glance' at a couple of polls, watch the start of a count and then return to their hotel in the capital to issue their findings and prepare their departure.
Issues such as who are the international observers, what is their purpose, and how and what are they observing, are among some of the integrity issues involved in international observation. These are discussed in Integrity in International Observation.
Impact on Election Integrity
Serious and appropriate international observation can make a substantial contribution to the integrity of the process. Some of these integrity benefits include:
At the same time, international observation can add to existing problems if it:
- issues a judgement on the elections without sufficient information or without having done a credible observation;
- is not objective and bases its reporting on rumor or unsubstantiated information; or
- issues conflicting judgements.
This last point has created problems in several countries. As explained by the Vice President of the National Elections Commission in Cambodia, in the 1998 elections:
The election observers' statements sowed confusion and resentment. While most groups seemed to give a passing grade to the election, a few others took emphatic exception. The losing parties criticized may of the international observers for rushing to judgement and giving an unwarranted positive gloss to the process by lauding the voting and counting. On the other hand, the U.S. International Republican Institute, in subsequent Congressional testimony, called the election 'one of the worst' they had observed since 1993.
Opinions differed as to whether the election process ought to be construed narrowly, to cover just voting and counting (which all agreed was well done) or much more broadly, to include the political environment long before and after the actual election. The pre-election climate, of course, had been marred by substantial violence and intimidation.
More disturbing than differences among the observers, however, was the sharp and often disparaging tone that some of the groups took towards those who disagreed with them. For the future, I would suggest that the main international observer groups develop clear common standards of observation, which will increase the likelihood of consistent judgements.
Observers should strive to be dispassionate and objective. Leaving the impression that election observation involves partisan mud-slinging damages the credibility of the observation process and make its very easy to dismiss valid judgements as mere political rhetoric. 311
These kinds of integrity issues are discussed in more depth in Integrity in International Observation.
