Basic Issues
Voting station managers and staff may need to react quickly in the face of a crisis during voting day to safeguard their own personal safety and/or the integrity of voting. For this action to be effective, contingency planning must consider potential crises. Training exercises for voting station managers should also test their reaction and judgment in the face of potential crises.
Possible Crisis Environments
Major problems could occur during the hours of voting as a result of:
- non-delivery of critical materials or equipment;
- inability of the voting station location to cope with voter crowds;
- natural disaster, such as fire, flood, lightning strikes in or around the voting station;
- public violence or disturbance in or around the voting station;
- threats to the safety of voting station officials or voters whilst in the voting station, such as bomb threats.
Effective Communications
Effective crisis management requires reliable communication systems between voting stations and election operations centres (see Operations and Security Centres) or other supervisory administrative offices. While initiative on the part of voting station managers may defuse a local crisis, the relevant operations centre or elections administration office should always be informed immediately. Communications strategies that include a regular reporting schedule for each voting station, the use of roving voting station supervisors, and effective availability of contingency reserves of materials and staff can assist in averting management crises.
Duty of Care
Voting station managers would in many situations have a legal duty of care towards their staff and any voter in the voting station area. They should be provided with emergency evacuation plans by the electoral management body; their training should ensure that they are familiar with these; and their staff should be briefed on these procedures prior to the commencement of voting.
Adjourned Voting
There are some situations in which it would be impossible for a voting station to remain open for voting, or in which it would be impossible to continue with voting at a particular voting station, while still giving potential voters a reasonable opportunity to vote. Responsible action, and possibly saving the election from challenge, can be assisted if the legal framework allows the voting station manager or other specified officers of the electoral management body to adjourn voting, for a short time, or to another date, and to another location if necessary, in such situations.
Reasons for Adjourning Voting
The circumstances under which voting may be adjourned and responsibility for such decisions need to be clearly specified in legislation, and the chain of command necessary to make and ratify decisions to adjourn voting laid down in electoral management procedures. It would be reasonable that, wherever possible, there be consultation between the voting station manager and senior electoral management body staff (and with regard to disturbance or natural disaster, security force management) in the region, before any decision to adjourn voting. Where there is no time for such consultation, senior electoral management body staff must be informed as soon as possible by the voting station manager, and a decision made as to where and whether voting which has been adjourned can be quickly commenced again.
The circumstances could include:
- natural disasters--fire, flood, storm--that would prevent voters on the voters list for a voting station from attending to vote;
- riot or public disturbance of sufficient severity to prevent voters from attending the voting station;
- unavailability of vital voting materials;
- serious threats, such as those of bombs, leading to the necessity to evacuate locations used for voting.
Length of Adjournment
If at all possible, voting should be adjourned only for as long as it takes for the crisis to abate. The identification of alternative nearby contingency sites that could be used for voting in such emergencies will assist this. In some situations--such as where a low intensity fire occurs in the voting station during voting hours--it may be possible to use areas outside or around the voting station to continue voting, depending on security requirements and the ability to quickly replace any materials and equipment lost.
Adjourning voting to another day should be a step of last resort, but may be necessary to preserve personal safety or in situations such as major flooding in the voting station area. Where voting has to be adjourned to another day, the legal framework should specify a reasonably brief period of days within which voting should be scheduled anew.
Postponement of Voting
In some circumstances, voting at a voting station may be adjourned before it commences, for example where:
- it is obvious that voters will not be able to attend a voting station throughout the specified hours of voting and no alternative locations provide satisfactory accessibility to voters;
- vital materials are unavailable.
This information needs to be transmitted to voters in as effective a way as possible; radio and television media or other public broadcasting methods are often the only immediate option.
Adjournment During Voting Hours
Where voting has commenced, and later needs to be adjourned, voting station managers should act under the direction of security and emergency forces in implementing emergency evacuation or other safety plans. The voting station manager should announce the adjournment of voting, and consistent with preserving the safety of voters and voting station officials, secure and move voting material and ballot boxes, voters lists and other election material out of the voting station. As far as possible, the voting station should be closed down and materials packaged normally--procedures similar to those for multi-day voting or for mobile voting stations (see Close of Voting for Mobile Voting Stations) could apply.
As far as possible, the same materials (that is, if not destroyed or lost during whatever crisis caused the adjournment)--voters lists, ballots, ballot boxes, and the like--should be used when voting is rescheduled. Alternatively, the re-start of voting could be treated as a fresh election with fresh ballot boxes and materials. This may make the procedure of final reconciliation of material more complex.
Except in specific circumstances where ballot boxes, ballots, or voters lists were lost during the crisis that caused the adjournment, in which case a complete re-run of the election in that voting station would be appropriate, it would be more usual that only those voters who had not voted before voting was adjourned should be entitled to vote. This will require additional care in publicity for the additional voting day or period of time and may require great tact and vigilance in processing of voters turning out to vote when voting begins again. Secure storage for the affected materials, ballot boxes and equipment, separate from other used voting materials, will need to be arranged until the restart of the voting, and arrangements made for reserving, staffing, and securing a voting location on the new date.
Ballot Counts
The legal framework also needs to consider the position of the count for other voting stations in the same electoral district as any voting station where voting has been adjourned. The need, for integrity and transparency reasons, for these figures to be announced has to be set against any influence public knowledge of these count totals may have on the voting behaviour of voters in those voting stations where voting will occur at a later date.
