Be Prepared to Justify and Defend all Decisions on Registration
The overall integrity of a voters list can be challenged, and the election administration officials
should be prepared to defend the inclusion or exclusion from the voters list of each voter. Officials
should also be able to defend the list from the perspective of efforts at reaching measurable levels
of quality. A good journalist may ask, 'How many eligible voters are there? How many are
registered? Is what Candidate X says about there being so many thousand unregistered in certain
areas true? How many change of address transactions did you process last year? How can you
explain the fact that this is a certain percentage fewer than were reported to have moved by
another governmental authority?' These are the types of specific questions that election
administrators often face.
At the least, materials relating to the decision on including or excluding voters (e.g., the registration
cards, forms challenging the registration of a voter, the decision of the revision court, etc.), should
be stored for a suitable period of time following the election. Furthermore, there is a need to
provide very detailed audit trail material, concerning such things as the date the registration
material was first filed, what documented evidence was presented, what pieces of data were
updated, at what time. In addition, this information must be readily available and accessible when
a dispute arises.
Provide Appropriate Mechanisms of Appeal
All decisions taken by the election authority relating to the eligibility of a potential voter, which
might include such things as the denial of the vote, the claim of a fraudulent registration, the claim
of a duplicate registration or duplicate voting, rejection from a nomination paper or petition or
recall, must be open and transparent, and open to appropriate mechanisms of appeal. In the first
instance, this appeal may be to the election authority itself, usually to the director of the local
electoral office. Following this, an appeal should be possible either to the election commission, if
one exists, or to the highest ranking electoral officer. And finally, where the circumstances
warrant, this decision should be appealable through the normal judicial channels.
