Environmental Considerations
It is useful to consolidate some of the factors that are of particular importance for organising cost-effective voting operations in less developed countries. Many of these are concerned with how best to attain voting operations principle objectives (see Guiding Principles) with lower levels of local resources and in environments where there is less experience in managing accessible and transparent voting operations.
In less developed societies, there are likely to be a number of factors that will require greater attention during voting operations planning and implementation. These include:
- less in-house resources within the electoral management body, and a potential need to carefully guard transparency and integrity where resources of other state organisations are required for voting operations tasks (see Transparency and Integrity);
- ensuring that voting operations methods and procedures provide sustainable solutions (see Sustainability);
- taking advantage of opportunities for development provided by materials production, staff training, introduction of technology, for voting operation purposes (see Sustainability);
- developing voting operations strategies that are appropriate for the literacy levels in the community (see Literacy);
- ensuring that local resource capacities, in terms of infrastructure and skills available, are carefully considered in voting operations planning (see Infrastructure and Skills Base);
- ensuring that procedures, materials and equipment used are suitable for the local environment (see Procedures, Materials and Equipment).
Traditional Societies
In more traditional societies, there may be specific issues to be addressed--in training staff, revealing voting processes and in voting site layout and management--that require a balance between cultural sensitivity and maintaining the democratic model of a secret yet transparent voting process. The integration of traditional leaders into voting operations processes, perhaps through accommodation within the system of representation or using them in information or administration roles, may be important for the success of voting operations.
In societies where the notion of individual secret decision-making (voting) has not been the norm, or where voting is traditionally a male preserve, enhanced measures may be required in relation to issues such as:
- promoting the employment of women in information, training and voting station staffing or voter assistance roles;
- voting station layouts that ensure secret individual voting;
- creation of special voting locations and/or time schedules for particular community groups.
