Election Monitoring

This edition has been dedicated to Democracy, Corruption and Development in Africa. It addresses the following issues:
a)  Democracy: Are regular elections enough?  Do election observer missions matter?
b) How can Africa strengthen its democracy and achieve development?
c)  How are data used and abused to manipulate election results?
d) Does corruption reduce chances of a sitting president or party n power being reelected?
e) How have governance institutions failed or slowed down African development?
f) How can aid help Africa to develop?
g) What role should  mass media, community media, social media and formal education play to catalyze African democracy and development?

ABSTRACT. An increase in the frequency and intensity of environmental crises associated with accelerating human-induced global change is of substantial concern to policy makers. The potential impacts, especially on the poor, are exacerbated in an increasingly connected world that ...

В работе исследуются основные подходы к определению юридической ответственности в современном избирательном процессе России и ее виды.

The paper examines the main approaches to the definition of legal responsibility in the modern electoral process in Russia, and its types.

Note: Downloadable document is in Russian.

One should not expect the 23 September election to comply with democratic standards. The current legislation in Belarus does not guarantee a free and fair process. The institutional setting prevents a transparent vote count and the election of opposition candidates.
Yet, in sending a full-fledged observation mission to Belarus, the OSCE again appears to be giving official Minsk the benefit of the doubt. Breaking the vicious circle of external regime legitimation would require consistency and restraint in giving this periodic electoral farce any credence whatsoever.
Imitating procedural democracy brings regime consolidation for Lukashenka: enticing the opposition forces – and their Western supporters for that matter – into the electoral trap is a pre-emptive scheme to disqualify them. Decapitated, divided, distrusted, the opposition is incapable of carrying out regime change.
The regime's repressive build-up also dissuades Belarusians from mobilising to contest the predictable fraud – for now. They are nonetheless expressing increasing demands for independent election monitoring.
In view of the 2015 presidential elections, the EU should invest more in the capacity-building and training of civil society actors, notably domestic election observers. Turning voters into reliable rule of law watchdogs could raise awareness in, and demand for democracy in Belarus.

IKP 2019 merupakan upaya dari Bawaslu RI untuk melakukan pe- metaan dan deteksi dini terhadap berbagai potensi pelanggaran dan kerawanan untuk kesiapan menghadapi pelaksanaan Pemilu Legislatif dan Pemilu Presiden dan Wakil Presiden secara serentak tahun 2019. Dalam IKP ini, kerawanan didefinisikan sebagai Segala hal yang menim- bulkan gangguan dan berpotensi menghambat proses pemilihan umum yang inklusif dan benar.

The Russian protests, sparked by the 2011 Duma election, have been widely portrayed as a colourful but inconsequential middle-class rebellion, confined to Moscow and organized by an unpopular opposition. In this sweeping new account of the protests, Mischa Gabowitsch challenges these journalistic clichés, showing that they stem from wishful thinking and media bias rather than from accurate empirical analysis. Drawing on a rich body of material, he analyses the biggest wave of demonstrations since the end of the Soviet Union, situating them in the context of protest and social movements across Russia as a whole. He also explores the legacy of the protests in the new era after Ukraine's much larger Maidan protests, the crises in Crimea and the Donbass, and Putin's ultra-conservative turn.

As the first full-length study of the Russian protests, this book will be of great value to students and scholars of Russia and to anyone interested in contemporary social movements and political protest.


Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: March of Millions
Chapter 2. Putin's Regimes
Chapter 3. Insurgent Observers
Chapter 4. Political and social protest: opposition and grassroots protest before 2011-13
Chapter 5. Political and Social Protest: Opposition and grassroots protestors in the 2011-13 protest wave
Chapter 6. Pussy Riot and Beyond: Art, Religion and Gender Regimes in Russian Protest
Chapter 7. Cognitive spaces of protest
Chapter 8. The transnational dimension
Chapter 9. Conclusion: Protest in Putin's third term


"Benefiting from his exceptional cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary background, Gabowitsch looks at the Russian polity from below. Highly informed by personal observations, interviews and a systematic database of protest events, the book offers a completely new view of the promise and challenges of protest in the context of the authoritarian temptation that has come back to haunt the entire European continent."
Laurent Thévenot, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris

"This book sheds new light on the forces and conditions that have shaped the anti-Putin protests in Moscow and elsewhere, examining in unprecedented detail the events, personalities and ideas that have changed Russian and global politics in recent years. There is little doubt that mass protests will occur in Russia again, though in new and unpredictable forms. This book helps us understand their fateful crescendos."
Alexander Etkind, European University Institute, Florence, author of Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience

"Gabowitsch's seminal study is of interest to the specialist as well as the general reader. It is a meticulously researched volume that throws light on the diverse protests that swept Russia in the wake of the 2011 Duma election. While they failed to prevent Putin's return to the presidency, the protests may well have heralded potentially momentous social change."
Josephine von Zitzewitz, University of Cambridge

This course seeks to expose students to the origins and evolution of norms of electoral integrity in a variety of contexts throughout history. Films and documentaries on the subject covering different places and periods of history complement book chapters, online TED talks/lectures, instructor lectures/notes, media reports, practitioner reports, and scholarly articles. Material from electoral assistance and monitoring organizations such as The Carter Center, the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), International IDEA, the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA), the European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES), Pakistan’s Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) will also be included when possible. While focusing primarily on scholarly and theoretical approaches and empirical strategies for studying the topic, the course will also expose students to data, practical/policy knowledge, and familiarity with skills, career paths, and further training necessary to pursue a career in international or domestic work in the field of democracy and elections. If possible, the instructor will include exclusive video online interviews with election officials, politicians, and scholars.

During the 2013 general elections in Kenya the crowdsourced election monitoring project Uchaguzi ran in parallel with ordinary domestic and international election observations. Such monitoring projects have been performed in several countries, and research on the methods and effects of crowdsourced election monitoring is increasing. In particular, scholars are focusing on the political significance of such projects, whether value is generated for citizen participation in democratization and political engagement. Very few studies have looked at the actual content of the reports generated through such projects and compared the findings of the crowd with official election reports. This study investigate the content of 2300 sms reports in the Uchaguzi dataset, and compare the story revealed in these reports with the conclusions in the election observation report from a recognized institution, the Carter Center. The report from the domestic monitoring group ELOG is also used for reference. The aim is to evaluate the relevance and reliability of the crowdsourced reports.
The findings show that the Uchaguzi reports indeed presented a relevant picture of the events on election day. The crowd focus on how smoothly they were able to perform the voting, on security and injustice like bribery or intimidation. They are far less occupied with electoral formalities and processes. Monitoring in near realtime enables the platform to be an alert central for urgent reports. Logging time and location for each message generates timelines and geographical overview that traditional reports does not. The findings suggest that crowdsourced election monitoring project can benefit from a further development of the questions asked to the crowd. Today these are to a large extent inherited from traditional observation methodologies.

The paper is an argument for a new approach to electoral reform in India. A detailing of what ails Indian elections is followed by a summary of reform initiatives so far. The paper then argues that while reform efforts so far have focused on supply side regulation, that is, laying down minimum conditionalities for a candidate to contest elections, it is now time to shift to an alternate and complementary paradigm. Demand side regulation, which the paper proposes, works by providing voters a performance report on the status of their constituencies based on certain pre-determined standardized pan-Indian parameters. Operationalization of this strategy
is discussed, as well as the distinction between the two reform approaches.

The so-called “Republic of South Ossetia” and “Republic of Abkhazia” are breakaway regions of Georgia that are recognised as independent sovereign states only by five UN Member States: Russia (which supports their de facto independence by military, economic and political means), Nauru, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela. Other entities that recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states are territories occupied by Russian forces (Transnistria, Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic), as well as Nagorno-Karabakh.

As the international community overwhelmingly considers any “elections” in these regions as illegitimate, no established election monitoring organisation would send its mission to observe “elections” in either South Ossetia or Abkhazia.

In order to give international legitimacy to the “elections”, the “authorities” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia organised their own “international monitoring”. The people they invited to observe the “elections” can be divided into three groups: (1) official representatives of the countries that recognise their sovereignty and independence, (2) representatives of the pseudo-states largely controlled by Russia, and (3) foreign individuals known for their previous involvement in various pro-Kremlin efforts and coming mostly from far-right parties, organisations and movements.

These pro-Kremlin efforts include but are not limited to: (1) previous participation in politically biased and/or illegitimate electoral monitoring missions in Russia and elsewhere; (2) legitimisation and justification of Russia’s actions aimed at undermining the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine; (3) cooperation with pro-Kremlin propaganda resources; (4) criticism of the European sanctions imposed on Russia in relation to its aggression towards Ukraine; and (5) membership in Western pro-Kremlin organisations, movements and groups.

The presence of “foreign observers” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia was underpinned not by the actual need to observe the “elections”, but rather by the intent to mimic legitimate international election monitoring in order to create an impression that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were legitimate independent states. Hence, the activities of “foreign observers” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia had nothing to do with the established principles and/or practices of international electoral observation.

The Auditing firm, BDO, engaged by the Malawi's electoral commission to ascertain the correctness of the 2019 election results being transmitted to the National Tally Centre before announcement,  observed the following anomalies, among others:
1. Election forms were not all signed by POs and monitors.
2. A number of Form 66 were not clear.
3. A Significant number of Form 66 were over scribbled, as a result, most of Form 66 became a mess and therefore needed to be replaced by duplicate forms, manually prepared forms, which were completed at the constituency tally centres. Some of the forms were excessively tippexed by POs who used tippex to do their corrections. Auditors made sure that all the figures were tallied and used the logbooks as the source documents to validate tippexed entries. In some instances, the replacement forms were signed off by all parties involved.

Capitolul de început al volumului prezintă cadrul general al cercetării:
obiectivele proiectului mai sus menţionat, activităţile întreprinse pentru
îndeplinirea lor şi metodologia de cercetare.
Cel de-al doilea capitol tratează contextul legislativ şi politic al
alegerilor locale din 2012: modificările legislaţiei referitoare la alegerea
reprezentanţilor autorităţilor administraţiei publice locale şi o trecere în
revistă a competitorilor electorali locali.
Capitolele trei şi patru, mai substanţiale, cuprind rezultatele efective
ale cercetărilor noastre cu privire la reflectarea campaniei electorale în
mass-media locală (presa tipărită şi televiziune) şi la observarea procesului
electoral din 10 iunie.
Capitolul final prezintă concluziile cercetărilor noastre şi câteva
recomandări posibile în vederea îmbunătăţirii organizării şi desfăşurării
alegerilor la nivel local.

Why do democracies agree with contested illiberal regimes on the creation of regional institutions for election monitoring? This article tackles this puzzle by analyzing the creation of the Union of South American Nations' (UNASUR) Electoral Council (ECU) and its electoral "accompaniment" missions. The case of the ECU is particularly relevant, since its missions allowed for the legitimization of illiberal electoral practices in a region predominantly populated by democratic states that have pursued democracy consolidation through regional cooperation. We show that the emergence of the ECU resulted from the interaction of the following conditions: Venezuela's leadership; the mobilization of the transgovernmental network of South American electoral authorities; and the interaction between different sets of state preferences regarding election observation, which reached an equilibrium around an institutional design that did not impose a diminution of sovereignty on the contracting states. The article sheds light on the genesis of sovereignty-protective institutional designs, showing how they allow for the reconciliation of non-coincident preferences even in a sensitive field like election observation. The article also contributes to the literature on international election observation by explaining why democratic states may favor the emergence of monitoring mechanisms that contribute to the erosion of democracy in a region. In so doing, the

This article investigates to what extent activity of a social movement on a social networking site is related to participation in offline collective action. This research contributes to a broader theory of effective communicative structures of social movements. We use the data from seventeen online groups representing the branches of the Observers for Fair Elections movement in districts of St. Petersburg, Russia, and compare their online properties to offline participation of movement members as electoral observers. We find that while prediction of individual offline participation with this online data is of limited power, association between district participation rates and online group features is very strong. Large, more inclusive and evenly connected networks, where people engage in high-threshold online activities, produce more offline participants; weak individual-level prediction, combined with strong group-level prediction, suggests either the presence of the "network effect" or of third factors-e.g., prior contentious experience or the leaders' effect.

As the world's first citizen-led election watchdog, National Citizen's Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) sets as the pioneer when it comes to election monitoring particularly in the Southeast Asia region for their cause to strive for a wider space for the democracy. Therefore, it is particularly important to document and analyze the role of NAMFREL during the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos. This paper looks at the significance of elections as a pillar for democratic process especially the civil and political rights of citizens to monitor electoral process under the experience of authoritarian leadership. Election under the regime of Marcos has been tainted with fraud, intimidation, corruption, abuse of power, used of government machinery, money politics and a long list of unfairness, unclean and injustices. However the existence of NAMFREL helps to bring back the power to choose to the people and expose the hypocrisy of the flawed system.

Face ao ciclo eleitoral que se avizinha em Moçambique, às incidências acontecidas nas eleições no país nas últimas duas décadas, e à aparente eclosão de nova guerra interna no país, recupero passos da minha biografia profissional, ligados a processos de democratização em países provenientes de regimes autoritários e, em dois dos casos, de guerras civis.
Haverá alguma especificidade dos antropólogos na participação em projectos de democratização?

Primeiramente, o estímulo maior para escrever esta tese foi o início da minha trajetória de estudos no Instituto de Relações Internacionais, da Universidade de Brasília, na qual tive a oportunidade de frequentar um Programa de Pós-Graduação de excelência na área. Todos os Professores e Funcionários contribuíram enormemente para meu aperfeiçoamento profissional e interpessoal.

El rol de los medios de comunicación y su importancia en la promoción de valores democráticos durante procesos electorales Por: Sofía Fiorentino Elecciones Honduras: modernización del proceso electoral en la identificación y la transmisión de datos

В деятельности международных наблюдателей острым и неоднозначным является вопрос – должны ли наблюдатели при оценивании выборов ориентироваться на нормы данной страны (национального права) или на нормы, принятые международным сообществом? В статье проанализировано несколько существующих на практике подходов к решению этого вопроса. Выявлено, что в деятельности большинства наблюдательских организаций приоритет отдается не только нормам международного права, но и международным рекомендациям, не имеющим юридического статуса.

This chapter examines two domestic election monitoring organizations in Turkey, Vote and Beyond and Ankara’s Votes. After preliminary research on these organizations’ reports and media appearances that were later complemented with data collected via interviews and surveys carried out with these organizations’ founders and volunteers, this study reveals that despite their claims to neutrality, non-partisanship, and being “above politics”, and despite the increasingly geographical nature of cleavages within the Turkish electorate, these organizations tend to mirror the political culture and voting behavioral characteristics of secular coastal areas in the west at the expense of the southeastern Kurdish and conservative/nationalistic central areas.

The ascension of Fernando Lugo into Paraguay’s presidency in 2008, by the coalition “Alianza Patriótica para el Cambio”, ought to be considered as a historical landmark in its country policy, especially when we consider its historical record, which is: Paraguay was always ruled by two major parties, Asociación Nacional Republicana, mostly known as “Partido Colorado”, and the Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico. Lugo started what is considered a new political momentum, mainly when it is related to its relationship with the other South America’s countries, a situation that quickly generated conflicts between his coalition and the Senate, whose majority belonged to his opposition, the Partido Colorado. After an accident involving the landless movement in 2012, Lugo was deposed from his chair by an impeachment process, initiated by a Colorado deputy. This domestic crisis led to several external consequences, like Paraguay’s suspension from MERCOSUR and UNASUR, institutions that had considered the impeachment process as a coup and admitting the country back only after a new democratic election. In such way, Paraguay, interested in showing its commitment to the democratic order, agreed to received observatory missions from regional organizations in 2013, such like UNASUR, the Organization of American States and the European Union. The objective of this paper is to describe the political scenario that led to the impeachment and to analyze the whole electoral process, using as resource the reports publicized by the three regional institutions cited above, as well as the releases from “Observatório de Política Exterior do Paraguai”, looking forward to demonstrate how each of these organizations reacted in face of Lugo’s destitution.

Citizen perceptions of the extent of fraud in a given authoritarian election can differ widely. This article builds on the literature on information acquisition and processing in democracies to argue that much of this variation is due to the way in which citizens’ underlying political orientations affect both the kind of information they gather and how they process that information. These differences in information acquisition and processing have important implications for how election monitoring reports, access to the internet and other sources of information are likely to affect the stability of contemporary authoritarian regimes. The theory is tested using observational data and a survey experiment from the Russia presidential election of 2012.

This is an interview conducted in Turkish by Esma Şen of Analist (publication of International Strategic Research Organization (USAK))  about the work of Turkish non-partisan NGO,  Oy ve Ötesi, which aims at monitoring elections to ensure a free and fair process with its 52 thousand volunteers across Turkey.

Правовое развитие в современном понимании немыслимо без реализации комплекса специфических мер и видов юридической ответственности, характерных для каждой отрасли права.

This article describes the problems of the civil responsibility of the electoral process. Special attention is paid to the problem of abuse of law.

Note: Downloadable document is in Russian.

Civil society has proven outstanding capacities of involvement in the 2004 general elections in Romania and put a remarkable pressure on the political society. This paper aims to discuss the consequences of such involvement for both the political and civil society. We also investigate the conditions that have favoured a successful challenge of the main political actors by the most visible civic advocacy organizations. Further, we inquire how deep can an actor from the civil society go into the lands of the political society. In the end, we weight the achievements and the failures of civil society’s active involvement in the game of elections.

В данной статье рассматривается взаимосвязь технологических, технических, организационных и правовых аспектов и влияние их на успешность внедрения электронного голосования.

This article examines the relationship of technological, technical, organizational, and legal aspects and their influence on the success of the introduction of electronic voting.

Note: Downloadable document is in Russian.

Настоящая статья посвящена исследованию актуального международно-правового опыта на примере некоторых дел, рассмотренных Европейским Судом по права человека, который, как нам представляется, было бы разумно учесть и использовать при реализации мер юридической ответственности в избирательном процессе.

This article is devoted to the study of contemporary international legal experience, as evidenced in some cases considered by the European Court of Human Rights, which, in our view, would be reasonable to consider and use in the implementation of measures of legal responsibility in the electoral process.

Note: Downloadable document is in Russian.

An increase in the frequency and intensity of environmental crises associated with accelerating human-induced global change is of substantial concern to policy makers. The potential impacts, especially on the poor, are exacerbated in an increasingly connected world that enables the emergence of crises that are coupled in time and space.

We discuss two factors that can interact to contribute to such an increased concatenation of crises: (1) the increasing strength of global vs. local drivers of change, so that changes become increasingly synchronized; and (2) unprecedented potential for the propagation of crises, and an enhanced risk of management interventions in one region becoming drivers elsewhere, because of increased connectivity.

We discuss the oil-food-financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 as an example of a concatenated crisis with origin and ultimate impacts in far removed parts of the globe.
The potential for a future of concatenated shocks requires adaptations in science and governance including (a) an increased tolerance of uncertainty and surprise, (b) strengthening capacity for early detection and response to shocks, and (c) flexibility in response to enable adaptation and learning.

This paper discusses voter mobilisation and other election-related activities of Malaysian voters living, studying and working in Singapore in the context of Malaysia's 13th general election (GE13). According to the World Bank, nearly 400,000 Malaysians reside in the city-state. Thus these figures represent a significant Malaysian voter pool based in Singapore. Efforts to mobilise these voters for general elections or other causes have political implications for both countries, which became apparent following Singapore-based Malaysians’ activities to encourage Malaysians to return home to cast their votes during the 13th general election. Singapore's strict public assembly laws led to several legal issues related to the voter mobilisation and election campaign activities undertaken by Malaysians in the city-state. These legal issues became a source of friction between the two countries during the elections as government leaders and authorities on both sides of the causeway a...

Brief presentation outlines in less than 20 slides the key aspects of  the snap parliamentary elections in Ukraine held on 26 October 2014, looks back at the campaign, analyses the early results and makes tentative suggestions about how the situation will unfold further