Summary
Candidates and party agents should have access to polling stations.
Election Parts
Issues
Criteria
Quotes
- Ensure the transparency and integrity of the entire electoral process by facilitating the deployment of representatives of political parties and individual candidates at polling and counting stations and by accrediting national and/other observers/monitors.
- Candidates or political parties shall have the right to be represented at polling and counting stations by duly designated agents or representatives.
- Clear rules must be established for voting in polling stations, as well as other methods of voting, that include safeguards for secret balloting and that provide for monitoring by political contestants and election observers.
- [P]olling stations must include representatives of a number of parties, and the presence of observers appointed by the candidates must be permitted during voting and counting.
- It is important that the polling station officials include multi-party representatives and that observers assigned by the candidates be present.
- Accredited agents of political parties and candidates, as well as accredited international and domestic observers, should be permitted to observe all polling activities.
- The legal framework must address a myriad of issues to ensure a genuine opportunity to exercise the right to vote on the basis of equal and universal suffrage. These issues concern conditions outside the polling sites, as well as inside it, before, during and after voting takes place. The provisions must ensure, among other things, that: ...Transparency mechanisms allow effective monitoring by political parties, candidates, groups supporting and opposing referenda and other ballot initiatives, domestic nonpartisan election monitors, news media and international election observers.