The ideal requirements for an electoral administration are covered in detail in Electoral Organisation. They can be summed up as follows:
- must act with professionalism and independence in its criteria with regard to the political party in power and the other contenders
- must be seen by all as neutral in organising the electoral process
- must be sufficiently efficient and have the necessary means available
- will be subject to independent, reliable control measures, whether they be judiciary or any other
With the exception of the federal systems in consolidated democracies, the general rule seems to be that the greater the political distrust of the ordinary institutions of the state, then the lesser their capacity to make decisions. This can cast a doubt on their neutrality, the more powerful the organisation in charge of organising the elections in a country will be. From this point of view, the different electoral administrations can be classified according to 'a scale of distrust', structured into the following levels:
- countries that entrust the administration of their electoral processes to their ordinary central and local administrative organs and do not modify the ordinary control system
- those that--even though their executive and judicial institutions are adequate for conducting an electoral process--reinforce the control over the action of the executive by establishing an election committee with powers of control but not of administration of the processes
- countries that constitute specific electoral organisations entrusted with the organisation of the elections, but which remain under the control of the judiciary
- the highest level of distrust--the model of electoral courts--organisations that not only substitute the government administration in the organisation of the process, but assume all the functions, forming a fourth power of the state
By and large, the specific model in each electoral regulation depends on the consolidation that their democratic institutions have achieved. For countries in political transition, the rule seems to be the creation of a permanent electoral commission. Its members are usually appointed by parliament and some of them come from the judiciary. They handle the administration of the process, but their decisions may be revised judicially as a last resort.
They are therefore ad hoc administrations, independent of the rest of the state powers. In general terms, they usually work well and facilitate international collaboration and funding in the development of the elections, as they are separate bodies from the governments and are normally
representative of the most important political opinions in the country.
However, some doubts may arise regarding this type of body at a more advanced stage of the consolidation of electoral systems, especially from the point of view of available resources. This will be examined in the sections to follow.
