Transparency Issues
Access by political party and candidate representatives to all activities and documents affecting election processes is a basic foundation of electoral transparency. Different electoral management systems will handle such access in different ways (see Political Party Liaison). In particular, access to voting stations and the count should be open to representatives of all parties or candidates contesting that particular election. This includes facilities for special voting, such as early and absentee voting, voting in another country or voting through mobile voting stations. Where mobile voting stations use specialised transport, particularly by boat or air, it is incumbent on the election management authority to ensure that party observers are afforded the opportunity to observe their work.
Systems that allow access to only some parties, or enforce representation of groups of parties by a single monitor, subvert transparency, though there are reasonable management controls that may need to be imposed (see Role of Party/Candidate Representatives).
For key voting operations activities, such as voting day and the count, it is important that all candidates or parties are represented by observers at every location throughout the hours of voting, the count and the transmission and announcement of results. This may place a strain on recruiting the required number and quality of observers where voting is over a large geographic area, particularly for small or newly-formed parties, or independent candidates. In such cases, strategic assessment models should be used to select target locations.
Skills Required
In recruiting their representatives, the objective of ensuring that the party is treated equitably and that the election rules and procedures are applied equally to all participants will require selection of staff possessing generalist, and for certain activities, professional specialist skills (as described in Observer Sources and Recruitment), as well as party activist credentials. It can be useful for electoral management bodies to enhance the knowledge levels of party or candidate representatives by providing procedural reference materials or participating in their training (see Training for Parties and Candidates).
Election frameworks should ensure that candidates or parties do not recruit observers who may have an intimidating effect on election officials or voters--for example, the party in power using known members of local administrative bodies as observers.
(For a detailed discussion of political party involvement in monitoring voting operations, see Political Parties and the Electoral Process, Parties in Election Policy Bodies (Commissions), Training Party Representatives, and Political Parties as Election Monitors.)
