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Ensuring Election Integrity to Achieve Stability and Prevent Conflicts

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Ensuring Election Integrity to Achieve Stability and Prevent Conflicts Ensuring election integrity to achieve stability and prevent conflicts Special Political and Decolonisation Committee 1. Introduction Elections are one of the cornerstones of democracy. Considering that they empower people to participate actively in the formation of their political reality, protecting and promoting their integrity is therefore a top policy priority. Unfortunately, troubled electoral processes and their fall-out have challenged the credibility of democracy in recent years, thus leading to political instability. On the other hand, elections that are recognized as free and fair result in a peaceful transition of power. Without electoral integrity, leaders and officials lack accountability to the public, confidence in the election results is weak and the government lacks necessary legitimacy. Electoral integrity allows for peaceful resolution of conflict, open dialogue, debate, and information sharing amongst leaders and the public. Ultimately, the responsibility of protecting and promoting the integrity of elections falls on national stakeholders. In doing so, states not only pass legislation, set up institutions, or draw up codes of conduct and other enforcement mechanisms at the national level, but also commit themselves to regional and international principles of democracy. Up until now, that task has been completed with varying levels of success and so the question remains: how can election integrity be ensured both universally and consistently? 2. Terminology Electoral integrity: 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. Voting/Electoral system: Equipment, materials, and documentation used to conduct elections, including capturing votes, count votes, and generate reports. Fair representation: The principle that a legislature should reflect all of the voters who elect them. Like-minded voters should be able to elect representatives in proportion to their number. Election expenses: Candidates spend a certain amount of money (sometimes limited depending on the country) on their individual campaigns for advertising, touring, etc. purposes. Landslide: The name given to an election in which one party wins by a very large margin. Polling station: Place where people go to cast their votes. Turnout: The number or percentage of people eligible to vote in a constituency who actually "turn out" to the polling station to do so (or send in their postal vote). Invalid vote: A ballot is considered, spoiled, void, null, informal, invalid, or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote count. This may occur accidentally or deliberately. Election silence: A ban on political campaigning before, and in some countries during, a general election. Electoral fraud: Illegal interference within the process of an election. Electoral fraud can take different forms, including in-person voter fraud and fraudulent activity involving absentee or mail ballots, and can occur at different points of the election process, from registration to the tallying of ballots. Suffrage or franchise: The right to vote in public, political elections. Suffrage is granted to qualifying citizens once they have reached the voting age. What constitutes a qualifying citizen depends on the government's decision. Their total number constitutes the electorate . Election observation mission: During an election observation mission, a group of independent international observers monitors the electoral process in order to critically assess the electoral process on the basis of international standards and the national legislation of the host country. In addition to international organizations such as the EU, ODIHR, or the Organization of American States (OAS), election observation missions are also carried out by local and international non-governmental and civil society organizations such as the Carter Center. 3. Overview ● Timeline Although various electoral processes were used in ancient Athens, in Rome, and in the selection of popes and Holy Roman emperors, the origins of elections in the contemporary world lie in the gradual emergence of representative government in Europe and North America beginning in the 17th century. During the 18th century, access to the political arena depended largely on membership in an aristocracy, and participation in elections was regulated mainly by local customs and arrangements. Although both the American and French revolutions declared every citizen formally equal to every other, the vote remained an instrument of political power possessed by very few. As the years went by the voting system of all countries has been long updated with varying rapidity depending on the country. Major reforms of elections framework have been New Zealand being the first nation to give women the right to vote in 1893, the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 in the United States that significantly widened the franchise by removing certain legal barriers and the first multiracial elections (not white people exclusive) in South Africa in 1994. ● UN involvement While it is each country’s sovereign right to choose its own electoral system, UN Member States have agreed to abide by a set of obligations and commitments to protect and promote the electoral rights of their citizens. The very establishment of elections is an obligation introduced in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that ‘the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures’. Another UN key treaty is the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that provides a range of protections for civil and political rights. Furthermore, in the last two decades, the UN Security Council has regularly urged authorities to advance constitutional and legal reform that is relevant to elections. On a more technical level, it has demanded the timely appointment of independent and impartial election commissioners, pressed governments to register voters on a timely and inclusive basis, stressed the importance of fair access to free private and public media for all candidates, and insisted on effective voter information campaigns. The language used in UNSC resolutions to qualify elections includes adjectives such as ‘transparent’, ‘inclusive’, ‘open’ and ‘credible’ so as to define the meaning of the notion of ‘free and fair’. The UN General Assembly adopted its first resolution that exclusively elaborates on electoral processes at its 43rd session in 1988. Since the UN cannot actively participate in the formation of the Member States’ electoral system so as to ensure their integrity, it offers assistance to them throughout the whole electoral cycle. More than 100 countries have requested and have received United Nations electoral assistance since 1991, the year in which the Secretary-General designated the Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs as a focal point for electoral assistance matters, with the endorsement of the General Assembly. The type of assistance the UN provides with the Member States if requested, includes technical support, support in creating a conducive environment, organization and conduct of an electoral process, certification/verification, electoral observation, supervision of election, panels of political and/or electoral experts and coordination of electoral observers. United Nations electoral assistance is a system-wide endeavor, tapping the complementary expertise and capacities of many parts of the United Nations family. These include: ● The Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) ● The Department of Peace Operations (DPO) ● The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ● The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) ● United Nations Volunteers (UNV) ● The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) ● The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ● The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) ● The International Organization for Migration (IOM) ● Legal framework Measures to maintain the integrity of elections are generally adapted to local conditions. What can be a serious problem in one country might be insignificant in another and therefore not require the same degree of attention or protective measures. In particular, the system of governance, political culture and popular attitudes affect the nature and scope of election integrity issues, along with the effectiveness of the different measures for addressing them. The legal framework is one of the foundations for protecting the integrity of elections, implementing the principles of free, fair and competitive elections and providing the basis for upholding these principles and ensuring compliance with them. Constitutions enshrine the political freedoms needed for competitive elections. Regulations ensure the fairness of the process, equality of opportunity and accountability of all participants. Codes of conduct help prevent unethical behavior. In most cases, the groundwork of the electoral system is found in the Constitution -- the supreme law
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