In recent years, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Indonesia, Palestine, Sierra Leone have all faced immense challenges in preparing elections. In some of these places, such as Sierra Leone, Indonesia, and Palestine, electoral assistance has proven to contribute to stability, and better electoral processes. In others, large sums of money have been spent on electoral technology which will need to be maintained after polling day.

Although the international community provides support to elections, there is a tendency for donors to see elections as isolated periodic events. Elections have an easily identifiable and measurable outcome, provide high visibility, are politically attractive and are easy to justify internally. How the experience of running an election is carried on to the next electoral cycle is however unclear. Donors and governments tend to lose interest immediately after an election, once the results are announced and the government is in place.

In between elections

Over the past few years donors and organizations involved in electoral assistance felt the need to review practices and take stock of what has been achieved over the past 15 years – when the field of electoral aid began - and what could be improved. Electoral assistance programmes have recently started to look at “in between elections” to have better long-term planning and use of funds, more time to develop skills and introduce new technology and also to link this assistance to other sectors of governance and education and wider democratization and development programmes. Following a meeting in Brussels in 2004 organized by the European Commission and one held in Manila in 2004 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International IDEA launched its Effective Electoral Assistance project in 2005 to shift donors’ focus from Election Day to the entire electoral process set within a broader framework of democratization and governance.

IDEA’s aim is to come up with guidelines for effective electoral assistance as part of an integrated approach towards democracy building support. The key point of the project is that in order to be effective, electoral assistance should include a wider array of beneficiaries: not only Election Management Bodies (EMBs), but also civil society organizations, political parties and media, and should be provided throughout the entire electoral cycle, linking this assistance to the wider democratic governance and development goals.

With this in mind, more than 70 participants from donors, recipients and implementing agencies from 32 countries gathered in Ottawa, Canada, on 2-4 May 2006 to discuss “Effective Electoral Assistance – Supporting Sustainable Electoral Processes”. Organized by IDEA, in collaboration with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the conference looked at how the money spent on running credible elections could be better spent, and how electoral assistance can impact on sustainable development.

What was unique about this conference is that it tackled a range of perspectives at the same time. Experiences were shared between the beneficiaries, as representatives of the electoral management bodies from Palestine, Sierra Leone, Lesotho and Indonesia talked about what type of assistance works and what does not; of the donors, including the EU, CIDA and the USAID; of the technical advisers; and of the observers.

“Donors need to better understand recipients. Recipients need to better understand donors. Election observers need to ensure their recommendations are taken on board. Implementers have to understand all of this to deliver effective assistance”, said IDEA Secretary-General Vidar Helgesen.

Electoral Management Body panel at the Ottawa meeting 2-4 May 2006. From the left: Ramlan Surbakti (Indonesia), Manuel Carillo (Mexico), Abel L. Thoalane (Lesotho), Ammar Al-Dwaik (Palestinian Territories), S. Aiah Mattia (Sierra Leone)

Facing Realities

In practice, that means that electoral sustainability – the capacity of a country to continue to hold sound elections without or with minimal international support – requires that a whole range of factors beyond human and material resources are taken into consideration when designing an electoral assistance programme, including: cultural issues, existing infrastructure, security conditions and even the weather. Ron Gould, an election expert present at the Ottawa conference suggested that IDEA and its partners develop a diagnostic tool to assess such factors.

It also means that some myths must be reconsidered, such as the use of technology to guarantee credible elections:

“When donor budgets need to spend money quickly, it is tempting to throw money at technology. But, this is the best way of maximizing risks, minimizing benefits and compromising sustainability. We need to be skeptical, what are the real needs, whose benefits and motivation”, said Michael Maley, a director of the Australian Election Commission.

He looked at the benefits and risks of using technology for voter registration and the aggregation of results, and concluded that while technology is becoming an integral part of elections it does not in itself necessarily guarantee credible elections and presents considerable maintenance and sustainability challenges.

Sustainability of the electoral process must also be tackled at the level of Electoral Institutions. Andrew Ellis, head of IDEA’s electoral processes programme, addressed the issue of money invested to professionalise Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs). Investing in EMBs is key to help them becoming less dependent on external funding and expertise, thus developing the necessary skills while gaining and retaining credibility.

Common guidelines

If the Ottawa conference showed one thing, it was the broad agreement amongst donors, recipients, observers and implementing agencies, that there is a need to change the way electoral assistance is designed. No more “business as usual”: the field has changed, the needs have changed.

“This meeting has shown that there is a need to assess the impact and effectiveness of democracy assistance (…) With this conference, IDEA plans to come up with common guidelines to shift the focus from an event-driven approach to a more long term and developmental approach to electoral assistance”, said Helgesen.

Tangible recommendations for common guidelines and standards for improved electoral assistance that resulted from the Ottawa meeting include:

• Develop assessment tools to identify the real needs, formulate, implement and evaluate assistance programmes which complement democracy support in a sustainable manner.
  
• Develop training courses for donors, aid agencies and recipients, to help identify what, when and how to assist.
  
• Continue to further discuss the issues involved, by including all other stakeholders in this process, including political parties, legislators, civil society organizations, etc.
  
• Promote the use of the new ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, which features online authoritative information on nearly all aspects of elections and is a forum which brings together election professionals from different countries into the first ever global network of its kind to share experience and support each other.

These recommendations will form the basis to shape Common Guidelines which will be a useful reference for all organizations providing or receiving electoral assistance. In the meantime, the European Commission and UNDP have recently signed an operational guideline on electoral assistance and IDEA is involved in designing a training course for donors on electoral assistance. Many participants suggested that a follow up meeting on effective electoral assistance should be held which would broaden the perspectives by including representatives from civil society organisations, the media and political parties and review in more depth democracy assistance as a whole.

Contact: Ayman Ayoub, Senior Programme Officer for IDEA's Electoral Processes programme