The characteristics of specific electoral offences determine who has to see to it that they are avoided or re-establish the legal order that has been violated. Legal systems are usually slow, as a consequence of the formalities of the processes and the periods that the parties have to be given to collect evidence pertaining to the prosecution and the defence. Countries in the throws of transition might, in addition, lack the technical capacity, the sufficient independence or the legitimacy necessary for their decisions on such sensitive matters, politically speaking, to be accepted.
The same can be said about the investigation of the possible infringements, the necessary police protection or preventive control measures. An electoral process entails vigilance, control and prevention tasks, which are all the
more costly in human and organisational terms the less firmly rooted the democratic system and the very state, considered to be a legal system that possesses public administrators and officials to assure that the law is maintained.
The lack of an independent or sufficiently effective judicial system can be
remedied by designating judicial powers for electoral offences to independent
organs within the specific administration, under the conditions outlined further on. Establishing an effective and neutral police force might be a more arduous task. The possible alternatives will also be considered further on, such as employing the army and international aid. The final legal control of the whole process is a task of purely constitutional content that must fall upon the organisation commissioned with this task, e.g., the supreme court or the constitutional court, depending on the judicial model adopted in each state.
In any event, these are two clearly differentiated tasks--those pertaining to the police (security, vigilance and the restoration of citizen safety, if necessary) and the judicial duties to decide on sanctions to be applied and the restoration of the goods or rights that were compromised.
