The Protecting Elections Guide

This Guide is part of the Integrated Framework for Protecting Elections (hereafter the Framework). The Guide’s purpose is to introduce the concept and resources that form the Framework and to chart avenues for its use.

Knowing and using all Framework elements may assist user organizations in devising and implementing a comprehensive effort to protect the integrity of elections.

Background

Democratic elections are essential for ensuring the functioning of democratic societies. However, when electoral challenges are of significant scope and not appropriately managed, they can undermine the integrity of electoral processes and the credibility of election results. Therefore, protecting electoral integrity is of existential importance for democratic societies.

Challenges to electoral integrity

Electoral integrity challenges put electoral integrity to the test. They can vary between countries and within country regions. Also, they can change from election to election. Therefore, electoral integrity challenges may be examined, understood and explained in different ways.

One way is to distinguish between process- and context-related electoral challenges. Process-related challenges reflect the complexities of organizing technically sound elections, which cater to the rights of all citizens. They may include legal inconsistencies, institutional weaknesses, operational challenges, unreliable technologies, etc. Context-related challenges reflect complex environments in which elections may occur, such as complex security environments, social exclusions and polarization, corrupted democratic institutions and processes, natural and human-made hazards, challenging information environments, etc.

One can also examine the motivations of those who perpetrate acts to undermine electoral integrity. Political actors might use this tactic to pursue personal or party electoral gains. In other instances, foreign adversaries, or organized crime or terrorist groups, may perpetrate acts against electoral integrity in order to disrupt and undermine elections, weaken democratic institutions and processes, and create crises in which they prosper.

Another critical lens for considering electoral challenges is examining the ways in which different challenges may reflect on the rights and participation of various individuals and groups, including women and marginalized groups such as persons with disabilities.

Regardless of the approach to studying and/or addressing electoral integrity challenges, it is essential to note that different challenges often reinforce one another. Ultimately, the variety and magnitude of challenges will indicate the risks to electoral integrity.

Consequences of undermined electoral integrity

When electoral integrity is undermined or lost, countries can experience political stresses, shocks and crises. These may lead to the dysfunction of democratic institutions such as parliaments and executive offices, preventing the normal functioning of societies. When governments are formed amid electoral controversies, they may lack domestic and international legitimacy.

Furthermore, the rejection of election results may cause social polarization or exacerbate existing tensions. When people take to the streets in order to protest their causes, the effects can paralyse societies. Demonstrations may lead to better democracies, but autocratic regimes may also brutally suppress protest. In environments of misinformation and disinformation, post-election protests may also be staged to seize power unlawfully or to force undemocratic power-sharing agreements. When the result is large-scale violence, outcomes may be tragic, involving scores of dead and wounded, sexual assaults, displaced persons and refugees, and devastated infrastructure. In the long run, the undermining of electoral integrity may result in economic downturns or protracted conflicts and crises, which sometimes send regional shockwaves.

The spectrum of potential human rights violations involved is vast—from disenfranchisement to existential threats. While this brings hardship to all, women, marginalized groups and already vulnerable members of society often pay the highest price.

Why the Integrated Framework for Protecting Elections?

Electoral challenges have been confronted and studied for decades. Much of the related research, policy and action has evolved around efforts at international electoral assistance.

During the postcolonial period, the immediate focus was on ensuring that elections were free and fair. Anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (as promulgated by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966), ‘free and fair’ became a standard for electoral legislators and policymakers as well as for those assessing the quality of elections. Because of its succinctness and its connotations, ‘free and fair’ empowered national democracy champions and provided yardsticks for voters worldwide.

However, even when democracy is broadly endorsed, and when there is the best of intentions to organize free and fair elections, technical complexity and the cost of elections emerge as significant hurdles. Many transitional and developing countries faced such challenges. The 2005 ‘electoral cycle approach’—devised by organizations implementing electoral assistance programmes (i.e. experts from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)), and broadly endorsed by electoral management bodies (EMBs) and donors—became a widely used model in electoral management and assistance work (ACE n.d.). By distinguishing between three periods (pre-election, election and post-election) and eight sub-phases, it brought much-needed order into the planning, financing and management of complex electoral processes.¹ Also, it helped to promote an understanding that elections are not stand-alone events but rather continuous and cyclical processes.

Nonetheless, good electoral management and generous international electoral-assistance efforts have limitations. When elections are organized in contexts where autocratic rule is deep-rooted, or where autocratic aspirations are strong and prevail among political actors, the existing systemic checks and balances may be too weak to guarantee free and fair elections. To address these gaps, the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security—convened by International IDEA and the Kofi Annan Foundation—accelerated discussion, research and action on strengthening electoral integrity. It defined an election with integrity as ‘any election that is based on the democratic principles of universal suffrage and political equality as reflected in international standards and agreements, and is professional, impartial, and transparent in its preparation and administration throughout the electoral cycle’ (Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security 2012: 6); it also provided a set of national and international recommendations to serve this end.

National and international actors responded to the Global Commission’s call by strengthening research, policies and practices to consolidate electoral integrity. Yet, the landscape of electoral challenges is a shifting one. In recent years, the integrity of elections has been threatened in both new democracies and mature ones. This landscape reflects national, regional and global political changes, as well as developments in the security, economic, environmental, technological and other sectors, implying the need for persistent work to advance the knowledge and practices needed for protecting electoral integrity worldwide.

The Integrated Framework for Protecting Elections, which is introduced by this Guide, should be understood as part of a broader effort to protect electoral integrity. However, it makes several specific contributions:

• First, the Framework focuses on promoting and supporting increased reliance on risk-management, resilience-building and crisis-management processes in protecting electoral integrity. These processes are widely endorsed by sectors that deal with high-stakes and high-risk matters, but their methodological use to protect elections is limited.
• Second, the Framework offers a unique collection of resources: to assist users in learning about key concepts for protecting elections, to help them assess and improve their policies and practices, to aid them in developing related skills and capacity, and to ensure gender sensitivity.
• Third, by compiling various resources for addressing specific electoral integrity challenges in a single database, the Framework supports users in identifying and unlocking synergies between different methods and resources.

Part 1 of the Guide introduces the Framework, provides definitions, explains the key underlying concepts and describes its elements. Part 2 charts avenues for implementing the Framework in practice.

Readers should note that this Guide significantly draws from, and builds on, the International IDEA discussion paper Protecting Elections: Risk Management, Resilience-Building and Crisis Management in Elections (Alihodžić 2023), International IDEA’s broader portfolio on electoral risk management (International IDEA n.d.b; Alihodžić 2016; Vincent Alihodžić and Gale 2021) and lessons learned during elections in emergencies and crises (James, Clark and Asplund 2023). To enable easy reading and navigation through the Guide, citation of these resources—and of other knowledge that is common to electoral practitioners and researchers—is minimized. (All cited sources appear in the list of references.) In addition, each section in Part 2 contains text boxes that point to relevant experiences in different countries, collected through a set of original case studies conducted as part of the development of the Framework.

Part I of this Guide aims to build readers’ understanding of the Integrated Framework for Protecting Elections by introducing its key terms and definitions, concepts and resources.

1. Key terms and definitions

The spheres of policy and practice regarding electoral integrity operate with numerous terms, definitions and concepts. The key definitions proposed or adopted by this Framework include the following:

• Protecting elections is:
  • considered part of a broader effort to strengthen electoral integrity;
  • defined as the effort to prevent, withstand, or recover from negative occurrences that may undermine the integrity of electoral processes and results;
  • functionally situated in the sphere of EMBs’ work but requires inter-agency and multi-stakeholder collaboration;
  • reliant on extensive use of risk-management, resilience-building and crisis-management methods; and
  • gender-sensitive and inclusive.
• An election with integrity is defined as ‘any election that is based on the democratic principles of universal suffrage and political equality as reflected in international standards and agreements, and is professional, impartial, and transparent in its preparation and administration throughout the electoral cycle’ (Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security 2012: 6).
• Electoral risk is the possibility of an occurrence that can negatively affect the electoral process.
• Electoral risk factor is something that increases risk. It may be either internal or external:
  • Internal risk factors (endogenous factors) are process-related conditions which may lead to increased electoral risks. They are election-specific and do not exist outside the electoral context.
  • External risk factors (exogenous factors) are context-related conditions which may lead to increased electoral risk. They are characteristics of the context regardless of the fact of whether elections are taking place or not.
• Electoral risk management is a systematic effort to improve knowledge about, and situational awareness of, internal and external risks to electoral processes in order to initiate timely preventive and mitigating action.
• An electoral integrity challenge is something that can put electoral integrity to the test.
• Electoral vulnerability is the exposure of the electoral process to harmful situations and actors.
• An electoral threat is a situation or actor that can exploit electoral vulnerabilities.
• Electoral resilience is the ability of electoral institutions and processes to maintain continuity in the face of stresses and shocks.
• Electoral resilience-building is a systematic effort to strengthen electoral institutions and processes to withstand threats, by resisting (= exhibiting perseverance), adapting (= adopting flexibility) or transforming (= making profound change as to how things are done).
• An electoral crisis is a situation marked by existing or unavoidable damage to electoral integrity, combined with a sense of urgency and high uncertainty.
• Electoral crisis management is an effort to prepare for, respond to, recover and learn from electoral crises.
• Electoral integrity remedies are resources—knowledge, training and assessment tools—developed to address one or several challenges to electoral processes.
• Gender sensitivity involves the consistent and systematic consideration of gender-based differences and inequalities—between women, men and non-binary people—in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of processes and outcomes, with a view to addressing systemic and structural constraints to gender equality, as well as facilitating the achievement of gender equality and inclusion.

2. Key concepts

The Framework aims to ensure comprehensiveness in terms of: (a) the range of electoral integrity challenges addressed; (b) the types of electoral integrity safeguards covered; (c) the timing of intervention; (d) the types of capacities it strengthens, and (e) gender sensitivity and inclusivity.

2.1. Typology of electoral integrity challenges

Most electoral integrity challenges can be framed within one of the following categories.

1. Autocratization and undemocratic electoral reforms (‘democratic backsliding’)

These challenges comprise executive and legislative actions that undermine electoral integrity. Increasingly, politicians with autocratic mindsets use democratic elections in well-established democracies to come to power but then direct their attention to eroding democratic laws, institutions and processes to remain in office. This phenomenon is broadly known as democratic backsliding or autocratization. A crucial sign of this phenomenon is the erosion of the institutional independence of EMBs. When democratic institutions, including EMBs, cannot cope with such pressures, electoral integrity may be undermined.

2. Hurdles and malfunctions in electoral management and dispute resolution

These challenges denote paralysing complexities and unintentional failures in elections. The electoral process must cater to the rights and needs of various electoral stakeholders—such as political parties and candidates, their supporters, civil society observers and all eligible citizens, including marginalized individuals and groups. At the same time, the electoral process must adhere to strict procedures and timelines. The scope and complexity of this task mean that things may, and often do, go wrong for a variety of reasons—for example, logistical hurdles, technical and human error, external stresses, shocks and crises, or failures to deal effectively with disputes. Moreover, insufficient resources and funding may leave electoral management bodies understaffed or underfunded, rendering them unable to function properly. When such hurdles and malfunctions are of significant scale and are not adequately resolved, the integrity of the process may be undermined.

3. Electoral malpractices (including fraud and corruption)

This set of challenges reflects the dishonest actions of electoral stakeholders—national and foreign—aimed at securing electoral advantages. Such malpractices can range from interfering with critical electoral events—for example, committing voter registration fraud or election day fraud—to falsifying election results. Many electoral malpractices rely on corrupt behaviours, including widespread vote buying to bribe voters, or the bribing of poll workers or election administrators. Therefore, illicit and improper financing of, and spending by, political parties—including the abuse of state resources—deserve special attention. Contexts lacking strong oversight agencies and capable civil society organizations are especially vulnerable to widespread electoral malpractices.

4. Violence (including gender-based violence)

Various actors can perpetrate physical or psychological violence in elections for different ends. Election-related violence is often a tactic to secure electoral advantage. Thus, political parties may mobilize or encourage their supporters to commit violence, while incumbent politicians may use their security apparatus to this end. Such acts of violence are directed against political rivals or their supporters, electoral administrators or critical electoral infrastructure and materials. Violence can also be the tactic of groups that do not seek electoral advantages as such but that wish to destabilize the functioning of democratic institutions by derailing electoral processes. Such perpetrators may include terrorist organizations, non-state armed actors, organized crime groups, etc. When elections occur in countries that are already experiencing large-scale communal violence, gender-based violence, terrorist attacks or criminal violence, navigating the electoral process through such violence may be particularly challenging.

Electoral violence often targets women and marginalized individuals and groups, including ethnic and sexual minorities and persons with disabilities. Women and marginalized groups in political and electoral roles often face targeted attacks—physical, psychological, sexual and digital—aimed at reinforcing traditional social and gender roles and deterring their engagement. The risk, threat or experience of such violence can discourage women and marginalized individuals from standing as candidates, serving as election officials or voting, thereby distorting political competition and deliberation. Ultimately, such violence erodes electoral integrity by undermining the principles of equality, inclusiveness and fairness.

5. Malicious online actions

Because online spaces have unique features, malicious online actions are considered a distinct category among challenges to electoral integrity, often forming part of broader, coordinated hybrid campaigns to undermine democratic processes. These threats can be perpetrated by both foreign and domestic actors, who exploit electoral vulnerabilities to influence voting patterns, destabilize democratically elected governments or erode public trust in the election itself. The tactics employed are varied and increasingly sophisticated. They include coordinated foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) by states or state-linked actors; the deliberate or unintentional spread of false information in disinformation and misinformation campaigns (noting that misinformation can also spread organically, because of public anxiety and misperceptions), cyberattacks on critical electoral infrastructure such as voter registration databases, and online harassment and hate speech aimed at intimidating participants. Women, especially candidates and election officials, are disproportionately exposed to these threats through targeted online harassment and gendered disinformation campaigns. As digital technology advances, new risks emerge, with artificial intelligence (AI)—particularly generative AI—providing a powerful tool for malicious actors to create and amplify sophisticated false content at unprecedented scale and speed.

6. Lack of trust and negative public perceptions

A critical aspect of electoral integrity is ensuring that electoral processes—and consequently the results they produce—are broadly trusted. In this respect, popular perceptions are vital. When perceptions of electoral integrity are broadly negative, they may have concrete consequences, leading to challenges to, or the rejection of, electoral results—even if those challenges are based on incorrect information. A lack of trust and negative public perceptions may result from internal process-related weaknesses, media dynamics and public perception that undermine trust in democratic institutions—causing voter apathy—or as a result of intentionally antagonistic efforts.

7. Natural and human-made hazards

Challenges to elections may emanate from natural hazards, such as floods, heatwaves, earthquakes, tropical storms, wildfires and pandemics. Human-made hazards include situations (or conditions) such as wars and nuclear/biological incidents. When of significant scope and intensity, these events can damage or destroy critical infrastructure—national and subnational—for holding elections and cause displacement and hardships, preventing parties and candidates from running campaigns or citizens from casting their votes. Also, a declaration of a state of emergency—as the government’s response to hazards that materialize—can undermine the integrity of the electoral process by limiting citizens’ political rights and opportunities for equal contestation.

8. Exclusion and discrimination

Persistent patterns of exclusion and discrimination continue to limit the meaningful participation and representation of women, youth and marginalized groups—including persons with disabilities and ethnic minorities—in electoral processes. These challenges are often compounded at the intersection of multiple identities; for instance, young women or persons with disabilities belonging to minority communities may face overlapping barriers that further restrict their engagement and voice. Rooted in systemic inequalities, restrictive social norms, and unequal access to resources and opportunities, such exclusion can occur at every stage of the electoral cycle, discouraging individuals from registering, voting, running for office, or serving as election officials, staff or observers. When large segments of society are disengaged, whether deliberately or not, elections fail to capture the full diversity of voices and experiences within a population, thereby weakening the legitimacy of electoral processes and the results they produce.

One should note that elections often face multiple challenges. Antagonistic actors and external interference, when combined, reinforce one another, requiring significant effort and determination from EMBs, other institutions and societies at large to deal with them. Because challenges do not exist in isolation, neither should the efforts to protect electoral integrity.

2.2. Types of electoral integrity safeguards

There are different approaches to strengthening electoral integrity in the face of any challenge. This Framework distinguishes three key layers of electoral integrity safeguards: (a) legal safeguards; (b) institutional safeguards; and (c) management safeguards.

Legal safeguards are the backbone of electoral integrity. They typically include provisions in a national constitution and in election law and other related laws and by-laws. For every electoral challenge defined above, specific legal safeguards are likely to exist. If not, then they should. By declaring malpractices, violence and malicious interference in elections unlawful, and by defining sanctions for such behaviours, elections may be protected from them. Protecting elections in the face of autocratization is often achieved by ensuring constitutional checks and balances regarding the responsibilities for legislating elections, administering elections and resolving electoral disputes. Protecting elections against natural and human-made hazards requires the existence of transparent legal provisions for dealing with such situations in a collaborative and democratic manner.

Institutional safeguards refer primarily to national stakeholders’ capacity to uphold electoral integrity in challenging situations. The mandate to organize elections—defined within the legal framework—can reside with one or more state agencies. Most commonly, EMBs include independent organizations responsible for organizing the registration of voters and political parties, developing election materials, establishing and operating polling stations, managing special voting arrangements, consolidating election results and so on. Other state agencies—such as those responsible for security, anti-corruption, regulation of the media and emergencies—as well as the judicial branch may be responsible for providing support, and for dealing with specific tasks or resolving disputes. In countries where electoral integrity is inherently threatened, specialized electoral justice institutions have a significant role in protecting elections. In order to perform their duties, their mandates need to be coupled with sufficient resources (human and financial) and skills to ensure impartiality and effectiveness in dealing with various challenges.

Management safeguards refer to the processes put in place by EMBs and other organizations to protect electoral integrity. These are important because even the best electoral laws and institutional arrangements will not always be sufficient to eliminate challenges. Therefore, the ability of electoral administrators to navigate ever-changing landscapes (political, security, environmental, etc.) remains of utmost importance for the conduct of credible elections. Whereas safeguarding electoral integrity is entrenched in the general design and management of electoral processes, many EMBs adopt additional measures to deal more effectively with risks, threats and crises, primarily by putting risk-management, resilience-building and crisis-management processes in place.

The three types of electoral integrity safeguards are most effective when they are aligned. The legal framework is critical for ensuring that EMBs have strong grounds for acting impartially. Robust organizational resources and skills are critical for adopting and implementing risk-management, resilience-building and crisis-management processes. Once put into motion, these processes will provide critical feedback to the leadership of organizations charged with implementing elections, as well as legislators regarding the legal and institutional gaps that need closing.

2.3. Timing of interventions to protect electoral integrity

In terms of timing, interventions to protect electoral integrity—whether legal, institutional or management—can be focused on three phases: (1) preventing negative occurrences, (2) withstanding them, or (3) recovering from their negative impacts.

This concept may be applied to any challenge elaborated in Subsection 2.1 or to any of the three layers of electoral integrity safeguards elaborated in Subsection 2.2. Table 2.1 describes each type of electoral integrity safeguard in terms of preventing, withstanding or recovering from negative occurrences.

Accordingly, one challenge to electoral integrity can progress through different stages: it can be recognized as a risk before escalating into a threat and culminating as a crisis. This phenomenon can be illustrated through a hypothetical example involving the inaccuracy of voter registers on election day: this would fall under the category of ‘hurdles and malfunctions in electoral management and dispute resolution’.

The very notion that there may be some—even small—likelihood that voter registers may not be accurate, leading to disenfranchisement of eligible voters on election day, is a point when the risk is identified. Because the risk may or may not materialize, the integrity of the electoral process is not yet hampered. Assuming the risk is identified long before election day, an EMB will be able to scrutinize the voter registers’ quality in a timely manner and address potential inaccuracies to prevent adverse occurrences on election day.

However, if the risk materializes—for example, many polling stations start reporting significant problems with the accuracy of voter registers on election day—it becomes a threat that exposes electoral officials, voters and political parties to stresses and shocks, ultimately endangering the integrity of the process and the credibility of the results. If an EMB is prepared for such situations and can maintain the continuity of its operations while safeguarding the election’s integrity, it exhibits resilience. For example, an EMB may effectively redirect voters to polling stations where their names are in the register, or polling station committees may offer tender ballots to voters not listed. (A tender ballot is one placed in an envelope with the voter’s details, to be considered—added to the other ballots—only if it is verified that the voter’s name appears on the voter roll in another location and that the vote was not cast there.) Nevertheless, suppose that the EMB is unprepared for dealing with large-scale inaccuracies, and that the voting process is stopped or continues at the expense of integrity. In that case, the situation could escalate into a crisis, requiring urgent responses to recover lost integrity by offering trusted solutions for putting things back on track. For example, an EMB with a crisis plan that foresees such a situation would be able to effectively communicate its key messages to the public and then advise and assist affected voters in taking steps to ensure that their electoral rights are upheld.

Some threats and crises may be unavoidable. However, when they surprise EMBs, that typically indicates that chances were missed to consider/identify them as risks. The same holds for threats and crises, where the latter often develop from the former. To ensure comprehensiveness in terms of the timing of interventions to protect electoral integrity, the Framework—at its core—promotes systematic implementation of three management processes (a) a risk-management process, as the appropriate method for dealing with risks; (b) a resilience-building process, as the appropriate method for dealing with threats; and (c) a crisis-management process, as the appropriate method for dealing with crises.

Understanding and considering these individual concepts when designing efforts to protect electoral integrity will help bring order into a somewhat hectic process. Tables 2.1 and 2.2 portray the relationship between key terms and concepts.

However, one should understand and appreciate the significant overlap between the three management processes, in theory and practice. Therefore, when a stand-alone risk-management, resilience-building or crisis-management process is implemented, it will typically include elements of the other two processes. This is not a flaw but rather a result of logical thinking and evidence of the synergy between the three processes.

2.4. Types of capacities developed

Existing resources for protecting elections may be categorized in terms of the specific capacities they build, regardless of the challenges they address or the types of safeguard or timing of interventions. The Framework adopts an approach whereby distinctions are made between knowledge, training and resources for assessment and analysis.

Knowledge resources on electoral integrity include handbooks, academic articles, guides, policy papers, briefs, discussion papers, reports and similar publications. Their scope may range from specific electoral issues in a single electoral and country context to global challenges to electoral integrity. As a general rule, developers of knowledge resources aim to strengthen readers’ understanding of the phenomena and inspire policy and action.

Training resources on electoral integrity include training curricula, courses and modules. They aim to enhance the knowledge and skills of electoral professionals and various electoral stakeholders through capacity-development events or spaces. Training resources are typically anchored in specific knowledge resource materials. Trainers often customize them to local contexts and relatable experiences in order to promote peer-to-peer interaction and reflection. Such a learning environment allows participants to better interpret and adopt novel concepts, including through altered attitudes and behaviours.

Resources for assessment and analysis of electoral integrity include surveys, checklists and various online databases and software applications for data collection and examination. Their outputs are critical for developing the situational awareness needed to make informed policy and action decisions. Assessment tools are used mainly for the periodic evaluation of a situation relating to overall electoral integrity or to the state of specific challenges at specific points in time, while analytical tools imply that developments are monitored continuously.

When efforts to protect electoral integrity involve knowledgeable organizations and individuals who have both skills and effective tools, their overall capacity to protect electoral integrity will be robust.

2.5. Gender sensitivity

‘Gender sensitivity’ refers to understanding and systematically considering the different economic, social and cultural needs and experiences of men, women and non-binary individuals, with the purpose of ensuring that no one is excluded or discriminated against because of these differences. This is particularly important because: ‘When laws, policies and programs take a “one-size-fits-all” approach, they often result in discriminatory or ineffective outcomes because the “one size” usually is modelled on one gender, without consideration for others’ (Johnson 2022).

In the electoral management field, this area of concern affects everything—from the legal framework to registration, to the nomination of candidates, to voter outreach, to plans for election day, to polling place management, and to voter information and election assessment (UNDP and UN Women 2015).

3. Key resources

The Framework comprises four key resources, as follows (their order indicating their anticipated sequence of use):

• The Protecting Elections Guide (this document) provides a theoretical background and introduces the Framework along with its related resources. It also charts practical avenues whereby national stakeholders may use the Framework.
• The publication Protecting Elections Self-Assessment Survey assists user organizations in systematically assessing the importance, scope and quality of their existing safeguards to protect electoral integrity. Such awareness is often critical when optimizing efforts to protect elections at the organizational and/or country level. A self-assessment methodology ensures that these efforts are methodologically sound, safe for the organization involved, gender-sensitive and conducive to ownership of the findings. When self-assessments are conducted by several national organizations with mandates to protect, or contribute to, electoral integrity, their individual findings may be used as comparative benchmarks for cultivating coordination, thus improving the effectiveness of the broader effort to protect electoral integrity.
• The publication The Protecting Elections Training Curriculum: An Overview was developed specifically to support users of the Framework in building practical knowledge and skills concerning key concepts of risk management, resilience-building and crisis management in elections. It offers activity-based learning by utilizing participatory adult education techniques, including simulations, to achieve specified learning outcomes. The curriculum combines relevant literature, case studies, election materials, websites and audio-visual resources.
• The Protecting Elections Resource Portal enables users to quickly find and gather comparative knowledge, experiences, policies and other resources to deal with specific electoral challenges. It takes the form of a database that consolidates more than 300 policy, practice and research resources—developed by EMBs, electoral assistance providers, academics and donors—reflecting national, regional and global practices. The Portal enables users to search for resources according to the categories described in Part 1 of this Guide.

International IDEA’s Electoral Risk Management Tool and associated resources, including internal and external risk factor guides, complement the Framework.

4. Key considerations for implementers

The Framework may be implemented in numerous ways, depending on the specific needs of implementing organizations, the scope of an effort, and existing legal, institutional or management arrangements.

Part 2 of this Guide charts a broad and ideal-case scenario, in which the Framework is implemented as part of a government- or society-wide effort to protect electoral integrity. The proposed scenario is anchored in comparative good practices backed by a series of original case studies and lessons learned through testing and piloting the Framework between 2023 and 2025.

Accordingly, key steps to consider in implementing the Framework include:

• taking the initiative and establishing collaborative arrangements;
• developing a national baseline assessment and action plan;
• putting processes in place for dealing with risks, threats and crises;
• building capacity and promoting continuous learning; and
• ensuring that processes are gender-sensitive and inclusive.

These are discussed in Chapters 5–9.

5. Taking the initiative and establishing collaborative arrangements

Because electoral risks, threats and crises may be diverse, efforts to protect elections should ideally bring on board a variety of national stakeholders, with relevant mandates, know-how and resources. Who initiates the action, who participates, and how to coordinate it matters.

Since electoral integrity is a public good of high order for democracies, the initiative to protect elections often comes from high-level government bodies. However, in many instances, EMBs or organizations mandated to provide critical electoral support—such as law enforcement or security sector agencies—may initiate such efforts.

Based on existing experiences, one can draw up an initial set of questions for countries and organizations considering implementing the Framework. These are:

• Which national body is best positioned to initiate the holistic effort to protect elections (in other words, which body has the highest authority and/or convening power to ensure that the initiative receives attention and prompts the action of all responsible/relevant actors)?
• Which other state actors should be involved?
• Which non-state actors should be involved?
• Should the constellation and dynamics of meetings change—for example, over the electoral cycle or in relation to challenges addressed/in focus?
• Who should assume the leading coordination role (because once the process is established, the initiating agency may not be in the best position to continue leading the effort)?
• What steps should be taken to ensure that these processes are inclusive and gender-sensitive?

To answer these questions, the initiating organization(s) should consider inviting other relevant agencies and organizations to conduct self-assessments using the publication The Protecting Elections Self-Assessment Survey provided as part of the Framework. The results will generate a unique set of data which is valuable for understanding different perspectives regarding perceived challenges to electoral integrity; the importance of an effort to address those challenges; organizational mandates; the strength of legal, institutional and management safeguards; and practices, resources, gaps and overlaps (within and between organizations).

Learnings will help achieve shared understanding and create a robust process that all key stakeholders own.

6. Developing a national baseline assessment and action plan

The next important milestone in implementing the Framework is collaboration towards developing a national baseline assessment.

The assessment should, at a minimum, chart the following details:

• the main risks to electoral integrity and the underlying risk factors (both process- and context-related risk factors should be considered; see International IDEA guides on internal and external risk factors (Alihodžić et al. 2024a and 2024b))
• the likelihoods and impacts of risk (the electoral risk heat maps are a helpful tool for making such assessments and classifications: see Alihodžić 2024).
• the possible responses: typically, in addition to prevention efforts, a higher likelihood or severity of risks will warrant implementing measures to prepare for, and respond to, related threats and crises (see 2.3: : Timing of interventions to protect electoral integrity).

One should note that the above points align vital steps of risk-management processes, explained later (see 7.1: Implementing risk management). Therefore, organizations implementing formal risk-management processes will be well placed to contribute to, or lead, such exercises.

Developing a baseline assessment through a broad, inclusive and consultative process will serve several purposes. First, inputs from multiple and diverse stakeholders will ensure a diversity of perspectives, which, in turn, will contribute to the comprehensiveness of the effort. All participating organizations, whether state or non-state actors, will have a significant contribution to make. Second, ownership is crucial for action, for there is much evidence that organizations with a mandate to act are more inclined to do so when they own and trust the information and analysis. Finally, the baseline assessment proposed above will be compatible with the existing risk-management, resilience-building and crisis-management processes that some state actors may already implement.

7. Putting processes in place for dealing with risks, threats and crises

Once relevant state agencies have developed a shared understanding of key electoral risks and risk factors, as well as their likelihood and severity, and charted options for action, they should link them with—or put in place—processes that ensure continuous collaboration. They should also ensure that efforts to protect elections are well calibrated to respond to a changing environment.

In this respect, three management processes—risk management, resilience-building and crisis management—may play crucial roles. Both governments and sectors that deal with high-stakes and high-risk goods may adopt these management processes. However, most EMBs use them insufficiently, if at all. The key correspondence between the general goals of the three processes and their application in an electoral context is outlined in Table 7.1.

This chapter outlines key elements of related processes to inform programming and implementation avenues that users of the Framework may pursue.

7.1. Implementing risk management

Electoral risk management is a systematic effort to improve knowledge about, and situational awareness of, internal and external risks to electoral processes in order to initiate timely preventive and mitigating action. Most commonly, the risk-management process includes five elements, as shown in Figure 7.1 and described below.

1. Risk identification entails consideration of possible negative occurrences (risks) and the factors (risk factors) that may contribute to them.
2. Risk assessment classifies risk factors according to their perceived likelihood and impacts. The Risk Heat Maps are a visual tool broadly used to assist in the risk classification process (see Figure 7.2).
3. Risk analysis entails collecting and examining risk data to understand whether risks are materializing. Observable indicators for different risk factors are determined, and data collection methods are developed and implemented (including gender-disaggregated data, when feasible). Importantly, this is an opportunity to analyse/distinguish developments in different geographical areas (the space dimension) and phases of the electoral cycle (the time dimension), the relationships between different risks, and whether effects vary in terms of demographic characteristics of the population (age, gender, ethnicity, race, etc.).
4. Risk communication ensures that all relevant teams and individuals within and outside an organization are risk-aware. Because many electoral risks are dynamic, communication should be time-sensitive and gender-responsive. Also, risk communication requires a culture that is properly attuned to risk.
5. Risk treatment is when risk owners, such as the managers or leaders of an organization, take concrete steps to prevent risks from materializing—including escalation to other functional units or external organizations—or initiate mitigation measures, such as resilience-building and crisis-management processes.

Risk management, once established, should be a continuous effort. Risk management in elections is, therefore, described by International IDEA as ‘a systematic effort undertaken to improve knowledge about and situational awareness of both internal and external risks to electoral processes in order to initiate timely preventive and mitigating action’ (Alihodžić 2016: 10). To assist with identifying different risks, observable indicators and data collection methods, International IDEA offers a gender-sensitive framework that distinguishes between, and describes, 26 process-related risks and 16 context-related risk factors (Alihodžić et al. 2024a and 2024b).

When adopting risk management, an organization typically requires the establishment of a risk-management framework that includes formal guiding documentation—such as a risk-management policy and decisions about allocating responsibilities and resources—and the building of a positive risk-management culture and capacity. Therefore, the institutionalization of risk management in an EMB or any other organization must be supported by the leadership; it must be built on processes and utilize resources that already exist, ensuring sustainability, and it should benefit from collaboration with other state agencies (for more, see Vincent, Alihodžić and Gale 2021 and the Protecting Elections Resource Portal).

One should notice that many organizations tend to tackle threats and crises as part of formal risk-management processes. Because of significant overlaps, this may sound logical and practical. However, because every method has its nuances, blurring risk management with resilience-building and crisis management may not be the most optimal arrangement. Instead, these may work best in synergies (Alihodžić 2023). Subsections 7.2 and 7.3 introduce resilience-building and crisis management in that spirit.

7.2. Implementing resilience-building

Electoral resilience-building is a systematic effort to strengthen electoral institutions and processes to withstand threats that materialize from risks. Contingent on contexts and types of threats, resilience-building strategies may focus on resisting, adapting or transforming:

• Resisting is about staying on course without changing how things are done. The ability to resist threats is essential when a change in how things are done would undermine electoral integrity. For example, EMBs will need to resist any reform that can undermine voters’ rights or disturb a level playing field for political parties and candidates.
• Adapting concerns the introduction of temporary changes to how things are done in order to withstand impermanent threats. Adopting flexibility is essential in environments where the threats are not considered permanent or long-lasting. An example of this was the modification of elections during the Covid-19 pandemic—including the adoption of special voting arrangements—to deal with health threats. Typically, changes are reversed when the threat is no longer present.
• Transforming is about making permanent changes to how things are done. The need to transform may be necessary for dealing with threats resulting from new realities considered to be permanent—reflecting political, security, technological, socio-economic, environmental or other types of development—which demonstrate that the ways in which things are done is no longer optimal. For example, the rise of social media platforms has forced EMBs to transform their communication and outreach methods.

Organizations implementing risk-management processes will be able to focus resilience-building efforts where they are most needed by assessing the likelihood of, and negative impacts of, risks. Strategies of resisting, adapting or transforming may include the implementation, or strengthening, of legal, institutional or process-related safeguards. Details on specific actions are beyond the scope of this Guide, but the Protecting Elections Resource Portal is useful in identifying relevant resources.

Table 7.2 provides indicative (common-knowledge) examples of actions for building resilience in the face of some threats and vulnerabilities.

One should not lose sight of the fact that resilience-building is a fluid concept in terms of the programming scope and desired objectives and achievements. Programming electoral resilience may occur at the level of individual organizations possessing a mandate to protect electoral integrity, or it may include government- or society-wide efforts.

Organizational resilience is defined in ISO 22316: 2017 as ‘the ability of an organization to absorb and adapt in a changing environment to enable it to deliver its objectives and to survive and prosper’ (International Organization for Standardization 2017: E). In that sense, the ISO’s ‘coordinated approach’ emphasizes the importance of the commitment of leaders and top management, adequate resources, a structure that makes it possible to achieve effective coordination and mechanisms to ensure that investments in resilience-building activities are appropriate. Moreover, the coordinated approach requires systems that support implementation, arrangements to evaluate and enhance resilience, and communications to improve understanding and decision making.

However, as defined by International IDEA, democracy is a complex system of many elements, the quality of which determines its overall condition (see International IDEA n.d.a; Tufis and Hudson 2024). This is shown in Figure 7.3.

Whereas Credible Elections constitute one of the model factors (under the category Representation as shown in Figure 7.3), one can posit that when other democratic factors are strong, electoral processes will be more resilient to stresses and shocks resulting from flawed internal processes or external disturbances.

Therefore, comprehensive electoral resilience-building will typically require a broad effort to engage and coordinate the various state and non-state organizations that play an important role in upholding democracy. For this to happen, theory and practice emphasize five key conditions (a) a common agenda of concerned organizations; (b) a shared measurement and information system; (c) mutually reinforcing activities; (d) continuous communication; and (e) backbone support organizations (Alihodžić 2023).

Finally, one should note the fluidity of the objectives and achievements of resilience-building efforts, whether at the level of the individual organization or system-wide. For example, building resilience to a specific threat may require transformation, which—once achieved—may increase or create vulnerabilities in relation to another threat. A broadly known example is the introduction of electronic voting machines (EVMs). The act of switching from ballot papers to EVMs is truly transformative in terms of how elections are implemented. However, many EMBs have been challenged on the grounds that EVMs may be prone to glitches or might be tampered with. This has pushed EMBs’ resilience-building from a transforming mode into one of resisting.

7.3. Implementing crisis management

Electoral crisis management is a systematic effort to prepare for, respond to, recover and learn from electoral crises. ‘Electoral crisis’ was earlier defined as a situation combining significant threats to electoral integrity, a sense of urgency and high uncertainty.

Across organizations and sectors, crisis-management processes can take different formats. The most common elements are reflected in Figure 7.4 and include the following:

• preparedness: activities undertaken in the pre-crisis period, when practical ways for responding to potential crises are considered, and crisis plans are developed;
• crisis response: putting crisis plans into action; and
• recovery and learning: steps to mitigate the negative effects of crises and restore continuity, while taking measures to ensure that such crises are avoided in the future.

When crisis management is coupled with risk-management and resilience-building processes, the latter two will already have covered significant ground. First, they will have pointed to possible negative occurrences that may have significant negative impacts on electoral integrity, creating crises. Second, it is fair to assume that efforts to prevent risks from materializing, or to withstand stresses and shocks when they do, will have reduced the number of crises to cope with. Nevertheless, because risk management and resilience-building will not always bring success, it is wise to develop crisis plans for possible situations that may have severe impacts on electoral integrity, even if their likelihood is not necessarily very high.

Electoral crisis management—whether it concerns one organization or involves inter-agency or society-wide collaboration—should lead to the development of a detailed action plan (for example, a contingency or an if–then plan), which will specify steps to mitigate a crisis. There are numerous examples and templates of crisis-management plans in circulation. However, common process-related questions are:

• Who develops the initial crisis plan?
• Who approves the crisis plan?
• Do resources exist for implementation?
• Who ensures familiarity with the plan among all relevant individuals/stakeholders?
• Who revises and updates the plan, and how often?
• Who/what is the decision-making person/body during the crisis?
• What are the crisis-communication plans and protocols (internal and external)?
• Who takes a record of actions and results, and how do they do this?
• Who ensures that lessons are learned and shared with all relevant actors, and how do they do this?
• How is gender sensitivity integrated, and representation/participation ensured throughout?

Practice has shown that, if done correctly, planning will pay dividends by enabling EMBs and other stakeholders to deploy their resources rapidly. When the crisis is over, it is essential that post-crisis discussions are honest, inclusive and constructive, and that they deliver actionable guidance about how to be better prepared for inevitable future crises.

8. Building capacity and promoting continuous learning

Electoral management bodies and organizations with related mandates need to ensure that their officials have sufficient knowledge and skills to deal with risks, threats and crises, while also ensuring gender sensitivity. Vigorous training and professional development programmes for permanent staff, as well as for those with temporary roles, enhance such capacity and culture.

Frequently, national electoral stakeholders implement training and development programmes in cooperation with international providers of election assistance or with peer EMBs that have a good track record of protecting electoral integrity under challenging circumstances. Such programmes can benefit from embedding and utilizing the numerous knowledge and analytical resources offered by the Integrated Framework for Protecting Elections. Moreover, the Framework offers the original training curriculum for building practical knowledge and skills related to risk management, resilience-building and crisis management in elections: this can be used as a stand-alone resource for developing capacity.

Contingent on their internal capacity and resources, user organizations should consider establishing ownership of the training programme or engaging external experts to implement it.

9. Ensuring that processes are gender-sensitive and inclusive

Gender sensitivity and inclusiveness are both the means to, and the ends of, any effort to protect electoral integrity.

The UN’s resources on gender mainstreaming (UN Women n. d.) and promoting gender equality in elections (UNDP and UN Women 2015)—among others—highlight the importance of gender-sensitive institutional structures, processes, rules and norms. In terms of institutional structures, EMBs and inter-agency collaborative forums tasked with protecting electoral integrity must ensure the systematic integration of considerations regarding gender and inclusion, as well as meaningful participation and representation of women and marginalized groups at all levels. Diverse perspectives and lived experiences will broaden the understanding of how electoral risks and threats may impact different groups, hence ensuring that rules, norms and processes to protect electoral integrity are sensitive to the challenges, rights and needs of all citizens. Active engagement of men as allies in gender-mainstreaming efforts, the establishment of gender focal points or dedicated committees, and gender-sensitive budgeting are broadly recognized as strengthening the gender sensitivity of any effort.

Gender-sensitive and inclusive institutional structures, rules and norms, and processes are therefore means (tools) for achieving one of the key ends (goals) of electoral integrity, which is the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and marginalized groups in elections. The involvement of women and marginalized groups—whether as voters, candidates, election officials, observers or service providers—must be recognized not simply as being beneficial, but also as being essential to the legitimacy and credibility of the process. The increased public representation of women and marginalized groups will pay dividends by further strengthening electoral integrity.

The following questions can help electoral stakeholders assess and strengthen gender sensitivity and inclusiveness in their efforts to protect electoral integrity:

• Is due consideration given to how electoral risks, threats and crises may impact the rights—including security and participation—of women and marginalized groups?
• Are gender-equality and participation indicators defined, assessed and analysed, and are related findings appropriately communicated and used to inform efforts to protect elections?
• Are efforts to manage risks, build resilience and respond to crises gender-sensitive?
• Are women and marginalized groups actively included in related decision making, leadership and positions of responsibility?
• Are efforts to develop capacity to protect electoral integrity gender-sensitive regarding content and participation?
• Is there dedicated gender expertise, such as gender focal points or committees, within organizations and inter-agency groups mandated to protect electoral integrity, which can drive and support gender-sensitive initiatives and actions?
• Are post-election evaluations of electoral integrity gender-sensitive, including through the provision of gender-disaggregated data?
• Are sufficient resources allocated to ensure that gender equality and inclusion are effectively embedded in, and supported by, efforts to protect elections?

10. Other ways to use the Framework

Regardless of whether robust efforts and systems to protect electoral integrity exist already, or small-scale efforts are considered, elements of the Framework can be used selectively or progressively to (a) strengthen knowledge; (b) strengthen capacity (skills and culture); (c) improve situational awareness (assessment and analysis); (d) improve management processes; and (e) promote and improve gender sensitivity and inclusivity.

The Framework as a knowledge resource. The Framework consolidates and points to numerous knowledge resources developed by practitioners and providers of international and national electoral assistance, including academia and organizations that observe elections. Therefore, the Framework’s Resource Portal and this Guide offer original insights that can advance users’ comparative knowledge and a general understanding of challenges to electoral integrity, as well as safeguards and options for action. Because the Resource Portal assigns tags to individual resources, users can quickly customize knowledge resources according to their particular interests.

The Framework as a capacity-development resource. The Framework offers several streams for developing capacity. First, users with advanced training capacity—such as training centres associated with EMBs and other organizations—may use the Training Curriculum offered by the Framework to build practical knowledge, skills and culture across their organizations. Additionally, they can offer such capacity-development opportunities to other organizations. These may include national stakeholders, such as relevant state agencies, civil society organizations or political actors.

The Framework as an assessment and analysis resource. The importance of informed decision making cannot be overstated when it comes to elections. The Framework’s Self-Assessment Survey assists user organizations in systematically assessing the importance, scope and quality of their existing safeguards in order to inform their management and capacity development processes. The Resource Portal consolidates many tools for assessment and analysis, and organizations may consider using them to strengthen the quality of their decision-making processes. Such tools exist as publications or in online/electronic form. International IDEA’s new Electoral Risk Management Tool (ERM Tool) software fully aligns with the Framework. Therefore, it will be an asset for organizations that aim to integrate a risk and action register with cutting-edge tools for assessment and analysis (geographic information systems, trend analysis, risk heat maps). Also, the Resource Portal is integrated into the ERM Tool.

The Framework as a resource for improving management processes. Electoral management lags behind many other sectors in adopting and implementing risk-management, resilience-building and crisis-management methods and processes. The Framework can help foster an understanding of the benefits and programming avenues for increased use of these methods by national electoral stakeholders.

The Framework as a resource for promoting and improving gender sensitivity. This Guide and all other Framework resources are developed in a way that integrates and promotes gender sensitivity. Gender-based discrimination and violence are highlighted as critical challenges to electoral integrity; gender sensitivity is entrenched in assessments, learning and capacity-development efforts. Therefore, the Framework can be a resource for promoting gender sensitivity in advancing electoral integrity, and a resource for those who know little about the concept but wish to learn more or put it into practice.