Codification of Procedures
Overall procedures and practices for administration of voting operations should be codified in a manual for use as reference material and as a basis for developing technical training for those staff of the electoral management body responsible for voting operations administration.
Such administrative manuals are important to ensure equity in treatment of all voters and to ensure that election laws and regulations are consistently and correctly interpreted by administrative staff. To promote transparency in voting operations management, voting operations administration manuals would preferably be publicly available documents.
The range and content of such manuals will be dependent on the structure of the electoral management body--whether they maintain a permanent local or regional presence or hire temporary local or regional managers, premises, and equipment for election purposes, whether the electoral management body has national control of voting operations, or whether voting operations are undertaken by other local agencies.
Staff Responsibilities
Manuals for voting operations administrators should clearly define the responsibilities of staff. Where administration is organised along lines of functional division, or there are central, regional, and/or local administrative offices maintained for the voting operations period, clarity of responsibilities can be promoted by producing a distinctive task/procedural manual for each organisational division or level. Subject matter should include:
- the range of tasks to be undertaken;
- their legal basis;
- relevant procedures;
- organisational methods and good practice models;
- examples of relevant standard forms;
- examples of common problems and solutions.
Subject Matter
Overall subject matter could include:
- codes of conduct;
- voting operations planning cycles, formats, responsibilities and inputs, implementation progress monitoring, reviews;
- review and determination of resource needs, e.g., voting sites and suitable locations, staffing and training, finance, materials supply and management, security, communications, logistics, special voting facilities (absentee voting, early voting and the like), voter information;
- budget inputs, preparation, and review;
- staff recruitment, training, payment, and performance monitoring for administrative assistance, voting stations, and the count;
- voting site selection and reservation;
- management oversight of voting station operations;
- materials management, e.g., requisitioning of materials and equipment, production and quality control, storage, distribution and return for administrative offices and voting and counting sites, materials security, post-election archiving;
- security arrangements;
- fraud and corruption control and electoral offences;
- nomination of candidates and registration of parties;
- determination of party and candidate order on ballots (where 'mark choice' ballots are used);
- voter information procedures and campaigns;
- liaison with political participants, other agencies, community groups, and observers;
- rights of voters and political participants;
- management of any special voting facilities, e.g., additional specific arrangements for staffing, logistics, materials distribution and return, monitoring, different voting procedures;
- ballot counting procedures and management oversight of counts;
- verification of counts and recounts;
- determination and announcement of results;
- handling of complaints and challenges to administrative decisions;
- evaluating performance.
(For examples of voting administration manuals, see Returning Officer's Manual - New Zealand, 1996, Divisional Office Procedures, Elections - Australia 1996 and The Electoral Administrators Manual - United Kingdom. For an example of a manual covering the duties of both local election administration staff and voting station managers, see Election Officials Manual - Ghana.)
