One year into Covid-19: Paving the way to change in electoral policy and practice. Will it endure?

Over a year has passed since, on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic and warned of sustained risks of further global spread. One year on, we have seen how the pandemic has forced a major re-evaluation of long-established electoral policies and practices, transforming the way in which, over the last decades, electoral management bodies (EMBs) have conventionally administered and delivered election after election.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this commentary are those of the author. This commentary is independent of specific national or political interests. Views expressed do not necessarily represent the institutional position of International IDEA, its Board of Advisers or its Council of Member States.

As the pandemic will eventually abate, the following questions arise:

• Will the Covid-19 crisis prove the force of change in electoral management policy and practice that, already for some time, has been expected?
• If so, what opportunities have emerged? and
• How much of this expansion will last, which changes prompted by Covid-19 will endure in the management of future elections?

Exposing pre-existing limits and vulnerabilities

The major unpreparedness as to how an election could be safely administered in a pandemic that was brought to the fore by Covid-19 was no novelty, as several vulnerabilities were already showing the strain in the management of elections before the shock of this crisis across the globe. The pandemic laid bare pre-existing systemic limitations and inadequacies of established policies and practices, reaffirming, with heightened force, their inability to meet pressing needs imposed by a constantly evolving world. Covid-19 did not bring all these vulnerabilities—it upended them, giving them new vigour, making them acutely clear and throwing them back on table.

This was particularly evident in countries, states and territories where important needs and inadequacies in the management of elections had been systematically considered—but acquiescently overlooked—for a long time. As the pandemic hit, it made it impossible for them to neglect or ignore these needs and inadequacies any longer: at once, Covid-19 made not only feasible—but necessary and unavoidable—advancements in the management of elections that previously seemed legally, politically, financially or operationally unachievable or that, while still being important, were considered negligible, unimplementable, as too expensive or legally impossible.

Sweeping the way for long overdue change

Recognising that, amid its multiple challenges and limitations, the pandemic has also paved the way to substantial change in electoral management policies and practice, it is then reasonable to wonder, once Covid-19 will eventually abate, what of these advancements can be expected to dissipate, and what instead will endure?

History suggests that, in the aftermath of global crises, the change they induced rarely disappears in its entirety. Some of the changes imposed by Covid-19 to the management of elections are seemingly temporary: hopefully, the wave of postponed elections¹ that characterised the first months of the pandemic will not occur again; and hopefully, when voting in future elections, the use of safety measures, disinfectants and personal protective equipment will no longer be required, or even less be forgotten, as new pandemics or similar health emergencies may still arise.

Some other changes in electoral management policies and practice will instead not only endure but will likely continue to drive and shape how future elections are administered by EMBs, contested by political parties, taken part in by voters and scrutinised by observers, beyond the course of the pandemic, in two ways.

First, the last year saw accelerations of electoral management trends that were already under way before the sudden spread of the pandemic. The pressure and resulting motivation to experiment and introduce new electoral practices and approaches—whether making voting safer, more voter-friendly, accessible and convenient by scaling-up special voting arrangements (SVAs)²; or resorting to digital technology³ or social media platforms to overcome the restrictions on traditional in-person election campaigning; or devising innovative, remote election observation techniques—pushed the timelines forward for reforms that, at some point, were likely to occur for other reasons.

Second, the rapid adaptation of the management of elections to the Covid-19 crisis, exposed fault lines of established electoral policies and practices which, developed and refined over decades of democratic evolution, had been designed and adopted to preserve election integrity in a different world order; they were meant to protect against different, and largely foreseeable, risks through solid—but overly prescriptive and rigid—frameworks, systems, norms, regulations, procedures and operations that they were often not allowing EMBs to respond to unpredictability with the requisite swiftness, flexibility and agility of action.

The pandemic reinforced the realisation and emphasised the need for a periodic and systematic review of the rules, norms, methods and procedures that govern the organization and administration of elections, highlighting the value of resilience, agility and adaptability in the fulfilment of the mandated functions by the EMBs.

Challenges looming beyond Covid-19

Aside from shaking the foundations of electoral policies and practices that had been consolidated over several decades, and forcing them to adapt and change, the pandemic has also shed light on new, forthcoming challenges that, looking ahead, EMBs can—and should—expect in the management of future elections. Such challenges include:

• New emergencies will arise: beyond the Covid-19 crisis lurk many others: natural disasters or extreme weather events; malicious foreign interference in sovereign democratic elections; terrorist threats; the deliberate exploitation of future crises by authoritarian leaders to undermine democratic institutions and processes; and widespread political disillusion possibly leading to voter apathy. While EMBs cannot eliminate emergencies, they can enhance their own ability to pre-empt or resolve them, or at least mitigate their impact, when they materialise, with effective emergency and risk management plans in place; EMBs can be better prepared for unexpected disruptions that may affect the smooth and regular administration of elections.
• How to sustain advances and innovations over the next electoral cycles: the pandemic introduced a new, more adaptive, electoral management model, which was not existing only a year ago.  Having to respond to the challenges imposed by the pandemic, EMBs were urged to aim at higher performing standards: to protect the wellbeing of all those participating in the elections, not only they had to ensure stronger public safety, but also greater professionalism, transparency, accountability, service mindedness, and administrative, procedural and operational efficiency. Some of the legal, regulatory and procedural advancements and innovations cannot be retracked once the pandemic abates and the world normalises. Consequently, the regulation, refinement and use of the advances made in electoral management may prove more difficult to be sustained in the long-term, than their swift introduction as a rapid, one-off reaction to the Covid-19 crisis.
• Further attempts will be made to erode public trust in the management of future electoral process: populism, the raise of new nationalism, exacerbated political polarisation, foreign interference in sovereign elections and the global spread of disinformation are all factors likely to continue further eroding public and stakeholder trust in independent, transparent and accountable electoral management in future electoral cycles. EMBs should reasonably expect that this, in turn, will most likely heighten public expectations and stakeholder demands for error free, transparent, modern and efficient administration of future elections.
• Incessant social change, economic crises and demographic growth will continue to hinder electoral inclusion, participation and representation: not all countries, states and territories have brought their existing voting methods up to enfranchise large numbers of voters who are, and will continue to be, increasingly on the move across the globe. Predictably, steady and large-scale populations growth will continue to intensify migration flows and voter mobility, within and across countries and regions, reinforcing the need for broader electoral inclusion of some vulnerable groups still notably and largely disenfranchised.

Limits of traditional polling station voting

Currently, most countries, states and territories across the world conduct their elections solely through the employment of ‘traditional’ voting methods that are rigidly compelling their respective electorates to vote in one way, and one way only: to cast their ballot, on election day, those eligible to vote must appear in-person at the assigned polling station in the constituency of registration.

The dataset recently complied by International IDEA reveals that, globally, one third of countries, states and territories are not offering any SVAs to their in-country voters: Europe, with only 14 per cent of its countries using solely traditional polling station voting methods, is the continent with the lowest number of such cases, followed by Oceania (22 per cent) and Asia (23 per cent); in Africa, the proportion is significantly higher, at 44 per cent; the highest proportion, with 52 per cent, is found in the Americas and when examining 20 countries⁴ of Latin America, it reaches as much as 75 per cent.

Commonly, traditional voting revolves around three requirements: