Showcase Seminar on External Voting, Decreasing Participation, Recommendations and Implementations: Institutional Capacity Building with BRIDGE Methodology

What is BRIGDE?

Started in 2000, BRIDGE stands for Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and Elections. It is a modular professional development program with a particular focus on electoral processes. BRIDGE represents a unique initiative where five leading organisations in the democracy and governance field (The International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division (UNEAD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES))have jointly committed to developing, implementing and maintaining the most comprehensive curriculum and workshop package available, designed to be used as a tool within a broader capacity development framework.
During the past 11 years BRIDGE has gradually developed and now it offers 24 modules under three main areas of electoral processes, namely the Electoral Architecture, Electoral Stakeholders and Electoral Operations.

Project Background

Under the grant support of IFES and a complementary micro-grant support of UNDP, in 2011 the ACEEEO implemented 2 regional training activities for member country representatives of the ACEEEO. A 5-days introductory workshop focusing on Strategic and Financial planning, and a 10 days Train the Facilitator training. Due to further regional necessities identified by E-Voting CC, ACEEEO Secretariat offers to implement a BRDIGE showcase under the same grant agreement with IFES to create an opportunity for European decision makers to get acquainted with BRDIGE methodology and broaden their capacity development opportunities.

Objectives

Showcase BRDIGE training methodology in a 2-days seminar Bring together election professionals from across Europe to share experiences on capacity development, external voting and decreasing Build new professional networks focusing on and fostering an even broader regional capacity development initiative.

Showcase Seminar on External Voting, Decreasing Participation, Recommendations and
Implementation

The 2-days Seminar in Vienna, co-organized by ACEEEO and E-Voting.CC, hosted by OSCE/ODIHR, will perform the showcase dealing with the burning topics of 1) external voting and 2) decreasing participation. Beside these, we are going to discuss and focus on possible practices of implementing OSCE/ODIHR election reports' recommendations in post- and pre-election period from an electoral cycle approach.

1) The topic of External Voting shall focus on
a. Principles of external voting (why have external voting and why not? What are the criteria for eligibility as an external voter? What is required to vote?)
b. Implementation of external voting including logistical arrangements (What are the voter registration methods for external voters? What are the voting methods? Where do they vote and when?) including also cost of external voting
c. Political impact of external voting
d. Design of evaluation or reporting process of external voting activities

2) The topic dealing with Decreasing Participation will focus on
a. Educate the public and voters on democratic and governance processes (Is it possible? Is it necessary? What are the challenges?)
b. How social media and modern tools have an impact on the society (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging). Voting technology developments.
c. Tools to use to increase participation in electoral processes

Logistics

The showcase will take place in Vienna, Austria, 3-4 May 2012.
Training venue: Vienna, OSCE Hofburg building, room 210
Participants shall cover their travel and accommodation. Lunches and coffee breaks will be offered by the organizers for training days, and a dinner will be provided for participants on the 3rd May.

We do not charge participants for the Seminar, however our places are limited. We encourage you to send your application to the ACEEEO Secretariat to Ms. Anna Solyom at [email protected] (see attached application sheet). When you receive a confirmation email, your application is accepted.

Please consider our cancellation policy: in case of declining your participation after reserving your place, you are required to pay 200 EUR.