Douglas Bain discusses his role as chief electoral officer with the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland.  Bain talks about several methods he instituted to bolster trust and confidence in the Electoral Office, including having his staff mask as voters and approach staff at local election offices in order to test the local staff’s responsiveness to a variety of questions and requests.  Bain also discusses his efforts to ensure the accuracy of voter registration forms to defend against voter fraud. Looking to future elections, he suggests greater transparency in the voting process can be accomplished through increased public outreach by election officials.  Bain also stresses the need for greater efforts to combat voter intimidation by the political parties.

Case Study: Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Elections in Northern Ireland, 2005

Remington Eastman of the Guyana Elections Commission describes his role in heading a group that monitors the media prior to, during, and after elections to ensure that coverage is fair and does not favor one party or engage in inflammatory rhetoric. His operation, which is funded by international donors through the commission, had no legal powers to enforce its actions and relied upon persuasion, or “name and shame,” to influence media behavior. He says that these efforts generally were effective during election time, but that the media often return to their partisan or inflammatory behavior after the election period. He states that the Media Monitoring Unit was especially effective during the Lusignan and Bartica massacres, in which Guyana citizens of African descent attacked communities of East Indian descent. The unit worked to calm inflammatory media behavior by showing them the consequences that flowed from similar media behavior in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Another media monitoring unit in Guyana, the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting, created by the Parliament, has the power, unlike the MMU, to enforce its actions through legal action by the president, who is also Minister of Communications. Two television channels were closed down for a period of time because of violations. However, ACB has power only over television, not print media. A 2006 Media Code of Conduct was adopted to guide media behavior during elections that year. It drew upon the Media Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, as well as codes of ethics at the British Broadcasting Corp., the Associated Press and other groups. Eastman also discusses the steps and costs involved to upgrade his agency from analog to digital technology.

Case Study:  Cooling Ethnic Conflict Over a Heated Election: Guyana, 2001-2006

Shukri Ismail discusses the formation and work of Somaliland’s first national election commission. She explains the difficulties the commission faced organizing Somaliland’s first elections, which included a difficult voter registration process, setting the election timetable and dealing with weak and newly formed state institutions and untested election law. Ismail also discusses the difficulties with political party formation, hiring and training election staff and the potential for violence when the commission ultimately determined the presidential election had been won by 80 votes. She also touches on working with international consultants, the electoral commission’s relationship with the media, the role of the clan in Somaliland’s elections, the lessons learned from Somaliland’s first elections and the challenges still ahead.

Case Study:  Nurturing Democracy in the Horn of Africa: Somaliland's First Elections, 2002-2005

Albert Kofi Arhin discusses the biggest challenges of conducting elections in Ghana. He details the process of drawing up a timetable for the elections. He explains the issues surrounding elections funding and the steps Ghana is taking to make them more affordable. Arhin also discusses staff recruiting and training, elections monitoring, boundary delimitation, and voter registration. He then focuses on fraud prevention, both in the registration process and during the elections themselves, and security issues.  Arhin also touches on the Electoral Commission’s relationship with the media, discusses voter education, and offers advice for other countries conducting difficult elections.    

Case Study:  Keeping the Peace in a Tense Election: Ghana, 2008

Moi Sellu explains his role at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in Sierra Leone. Sellu describes the major challenges that elections organizers face in the country; widespread illiteracy, low levels of technical capacity and difficulties in coordinating the relationships and interests of state institutions and stakeholders. He goes on to describe the National Elections Commission, reviewing its responsibilities and commending its preparedness, steadfastness, internal discipline and transparency during the 2007 and 2008 elections. He discusses the relationship that the major political institutions have with one another, namely the National Elections Commission, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the Political Parties Registration Commission. Sellu describes the security preparations surrounding elections, including police involvement as well as logistical measures like ensuring that opposing parties have rallies on different days. He goes on to discuss the media’s relationships with political parties and the government and ends by emphasizing the importance of voter and civic education, and that these approaches should be tailored to fit the distinct demographics of each region.     

 Jorge Guzman explains the role of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Program Management Unit (PMU) in the 2007 and 2008 elections in Sierra Leone.  He discusses how to coordinate efforts and negotiate competing requests from donors and national institutions while still operating within the constraints imposed by the UNDP framework.  He describes how tension was minimized through negotiations and steering committee meetings with the diplomatic corps and the government.  He explains how the final election date was kept stable, as constantly changing elements like procurement and recruitment procedures affected timelines.  He describes how the National Election Committee was restructured, with positions being chosen based on merit through a detailed selection process.  He also explains how the transparency and efficiency of the NEC was established through the formation of explicit procedures and guidelines and the publishing of the results of election procedures like registration, the nomination of candidates, and the counting and tallying of votes. He finishes with a discussion of training a diverse group of people, emphasizing the importance of considering context and fostering unity to successfully implement democracy on a day-to-day basis.