Electoral management is essentially about the administrative infrastructure required to support the
democratic process of elections. Successful elections do not happen without preparation and
planning. They are huge and costly events entailing the completion of a myriad of tasks and sub-
tasks and involving large numbers of people, all of whom should be aware of their responsibilities
in the electoral process and accountable under the law for their actions.
Not only are elections costly to prepare for and to run, not holding elections can also be costly. This
is because funding from international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank can be dependent on the existence of an active democratic society, or
because popular protests against an unelected government can disrupt a country's economy as well.
To balance the need for elections against the cost of elections, the goal of legislators, election
administrators, and others involved in the process should be to keep the costs to a level that is
easily sustained with the means at their country's disposal.
Elections also are not the only test of a democratic society. Increasingly on the world stage it has
been accepted that the holding of elections is no guarantee that a country is able to pass a
'democracy health check.' Elections and the possibility of bringing new leaders into office are a
critical part of any democratic system, but it is the interaction between the people and the various
branches and levels of government during the interval between elections that is a more reliable
indicator of the health of a democracy.
The 1980s and 1990s saw democratization and the holding of elections accelerate at an
unprecedented rate. They also saw electoral management become more sophisticated. It is
increasingly recognized that successful elections are achieved by an administration that is
professionally staffed, well equipped and adequately funded. T. S. Seshan, a former chief election
commissioner for India and the man responsible for elections in the world's largest democracy,
commented in the fall of 1996 that '...good elections require four elements: an election law that is
fully tuned to provide free and fair elections; an election commission which is truly autonomous
and fearless; administrative procedures that ensure even the smallest man and woman can exercise
their franchise freely and without fear; and an electorate which is fully aware of its rights and
responsibilities.'
India has 590 million voters who, in the 1996 general election, went to vote in 825,000 voting
booths, with no one walking more than two kilometres on the plains or four kilometres in the hills.
Each voting booth was staffed by between five and seven employees, meaning more than 5 million
individuals were employed in total to run an election that consumed more than twenty-five
thousand tons of paper and cost about $200 million.
Increasingly, the need for a professional approach has been addressed by the formation of national
and pan-national groupings of election officials and the emergence of specialized professional
education opportunities. Mexico's Federal Election Institute (IFE) has created the Professional
Electoral Service (SPE), a career system for specialized employees that aims to provide qualified
personnel to meet the needs of the electoral service. The SPE's requirement that individuals
working within it undertake various types of professional education throughout their careers has
contributed significantly to the professionalization of IFE's work.
Other professional organizations exist that cover the United States, Central and Eastern Europe,
Africa, the Pacific, Asia, and the Caribbean. In Great Britain, an examination has been developed
for people working in electoral administration. The Barbados Community College in Bridgetown
offered a four-week certificate course in election administration as early as 1994. One by one, the
various states in the United States are instituting standards for their local election officials and
beginning to offer training programmes. International assistance is also beginning to be more
focussed on the training needs of election bodies rather than material needs.
Election management is about selecting the right system for the particular circumstances. There
are many models to follow in managing the election process; the ultimate choice largely depends
on the historic and cultural background of the country concerned, its level of sophistication, its
financial and political situation and the education of its people. Election management has come to
be recognized as a service comparable in many ways to more traditional service sectors, and many
of the tests of effectiveness that are used in those sectors can be applied to election management.
Electoral management for the purposes of this work includes the body charged with responsibility
for the running of the election and compiling the voters lists. These functions often are combined
under the responsibility of one organization or individual but may be discharged by different
organizations.
There is no best way to structure an organization, and the establishment of an election
management body (EMB) to be responsible for these activities will inevitably involve a trade-off
between a variety of competing demands and needs. The EMB may be given many functions
including the following:
- conducting elections and referendums
- compiling and/or maintaining a register of voters
- promoting public awareness of electoral matters by conducting civic education and information
programmes for members of the public, particularly for women, youth, the illiterate, and
disadvantaged minorities
- training of electoral officials
- informing candidates, political parties, and other affected persons about the electoral
process
- ensuring that women and minorities are able to participate fully in the electoral process
- making regulations governing the electoral process
- enforcing the electoral law
- researching electoral policy and related matters
- providing the government, the legislature, and departments of the executive with information
and advice about electoral matters
- engaging in international cooperation and assistance
In
Free and Fair Elections: International Law and Practice, Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill
argues that:
Experience and recent State practice confirm the necessity for oversight
of the electoral process ... [and] for institutional responsibility for implementation by impartial
election officials...An oversight mechanism that enjoys the confidence of parties and electorate is
especially pressing in situations of transition, for example, from single to multi-party systems, or
wherever the impartiality of the administrative authorities is in doubt. The effective
institutionalization of basic electoral and political rights obliges States...to establish an appropriate
electoral system, to implement international obligations in regard to the individual rights, [and]...to
establish an effective impartial and/or balanced mechanism for the management of legislative
elections.1
The EMB should be guided by professional management principles, whatever the composition and
duties of the body. Election management is a cost to the state. In addition to ongoing costs in the
case of a permanent EMB, costs of $4 to $6 per voter are typical of the cost of an election in
developed democracies.
There is also a duty to discharge these functions as professionally as possible in the context of
delivering the service to the electorate so that it is as accessible to all as possible. Elections that
effectively deprive voting opportunities of otherwise qualified portions of the electorate whether
through placement of polling stations or physical barriers to disabled persons are not entirely
democratic.
In the introduction to his book Direito Eleitoral Positivo, Torquato Jardim, a former
member of Brazil's electoral tribunal, wrote: 'In the democratic state under the rule of law, based
on a system of civil liberties which condition the actions of the state, rare is the function of the
state that, performed incorrectly or insufficiently, can injure so many, so deeply, as that of
administering the electoral process.2
Electoral management is a service that is the focus of massive attention at the time of an election
but that is capable of being ignored or overlooked when elections are not taking place or are not
imminent.
Elections should never be overlooked. Experience in many countries has shown the dangers of
downplaying the role of an EMB in between elections. Even during periods when public scrutiny
is lower, those involved in elections from legislators and political parties to civic groups and
election managers should work together to improve the process and to ensure that the
administrative organization is capable of responding when necessary to a call for new elections.
Readiness and ongoing improvements are two of the principal rationales in favour of creating as
much permanency in the organization as possible.
The period between elections is an excellent time to spend planning for and implementing
modernization programmes. Because the management of the electoral process involves the
handling
of huge amounts of data, computerization may be one way of improving the efficiency and
reliability of the process. The costs of computerization need to be considered in the context of
each country; where labour is cheap but the infrastructure necessary to support a computerized
system is poor, it may be that the task can be more easily performed without computerization.
The files in this topic area will assist you in answering questions on these and other essential
aspects of electoral management. Where additional information is available in another topic area,
links are provided to the appropriate files.
