DEMOCRACY AND ELECTORAL STUDIES PROJECT

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DEMOCRACY AND ELECTORAL STUDIES PROJECT
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ABOUT US

• The Democracy and Electoral Studies Program at
  USP was established in 2004.
• The 3 Year (2004-2006) program was funded by the
  European Union under its Transforming Our
  Communities through Good Governance Project.

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Three major components

• Establishing Research and Academic Programs in
  Good Governance
• Promoting Public Information and Awareness in
  Democracy and Electoral Systems and
• Establishing a Good Governance Knowledge Resource
  Base.

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Major short term programs

• Data Collection on Elections and Electoral
  Systems and Constitutions
• Elections Monitoring in the Pacific and
  internationally
• Civic and Voter Education for Civil Society and
  Schools.
• Training of staff of the Electoral Offices
• Publications.

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Long term objectives

• Establish USP as a centre for expertise and
  information in elections and electoral systems
  and studies in the Pacific region
• Establish USP as a centre for the promotion of
  Democracy in the Pacific and as part of the
  International Democracy Network.

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Cont

• Establish USP as the Voter Education and Civic
  Education Curriculum Advisory Centre to ensure
  ongoing election education for schools, tertiary
  institutions and civic society to empower
  citizens to know and understand what voting is
  and also the principles of democracy and good
  governance in order to become effective and
  responsible citizens.
• Establish USP as centre for networking and
  reporting on democracy, elections and electoral
  systems in the Pacific and internationally.

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Major electoral issues

• 1. Electoral Reform-lack of commitment by sitting
  governments
• 2. Absence of integrated democracy and electoral
  systems with indigenous best practices that are
  proving effective

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Cont

• 3. existence of inappropriate electoral systems
  design.
• 4. Lack of permanent and independent Electoral
  Management Bodies (EMB).
• 5. Inflated/inaccurate Electoral Rolls

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Cont

• 6. Absence of Ongoing Civic and Voter education
  Programs.
• 7. Absence of skilled and knowledgeable Electoral
  Officers/Administrators

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Framework for effective electoral systems

• In the Pacific an effective electoral system for
  each country should have the support and
  confidence of all stakeholders and also be
  characterized by the following
• An election system established by the
  constitution from which responsible and respected
  national leaders are elected into Parliament
  and/or become the governing executive,

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Cont

• An independent electoral management body with
  powers to hire and fire, raise revenue and
  control its expenditure, initiate reforms, train
  its officers, develop civic education programs
  after wide consultation with all stakeholders
  through an effective dissemination system to
  schools, voters and the public.
• A credible, accurate and manageable voter
  registration system that ensures the integrity of
  the electoral rolls

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Cont

• A system that establishes and promotes
  partnership and collaboration with government,
  political parties, candidates, media, civil
  society groups and voters in fostering
  participatory democracy.
• A systematic result process that guarantees
  acceptance of the results by candidates, voters
  and the wider community and has an appeal system
  for candidates and voters to lodge and have their
  grievances fairly heard.

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Recommendations

• The establishment of independent statutory
  electoral management bodies as the overall
  authority responsible for vote registrations and
  the conduct of all elections.
• The need for developing long term plans and
  timetable incorporating past shortfalls and
  weaknesses and positive prospects for the future
  for institutional strengthening and capacity
  building of the EMB and the officers.

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Cont

• Recognize parties, candidates, and voters as
  important stakeholders in elections and encourage
  mutual understanding, cooperation and partnership
  to ensure corrupt free and non fraudulent but
  transparent, free and fair elections.
• Introduce ongoing voter education programs for
  schools and communities in partnership with the
  ministries of education, Ombudsmans offices,
  human rights advocates and other civil society
  groups such as Transparency International.

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Cont

• Establish Electoral Centers that depicts
  important political events in the history of each
  country to educate and encourage the young
  generation of under 30 years to learn and
  appreciate their history rather than just
  learning about the history of foreign nations.
• Develop and conduct regular training for elected
  officials, government and electoral officers,
  parties, voters and communities on their roles
  and duties as providers, receivers and custodians
  of democracy and/or electoral service.

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Cont

• Introduce and run BRIDGE Course Training Modules
  to Pacific electoral administrators, members of
  Parliament, civil servants and polling officers
  to improve their understanding and knowledge on
  the importance of elections, election systems and
  polling processes as connected to Government,
  Parliament and overall development of a
  democratic country.
• Introduce generic computerized voter registration
  systems to ensure concise and accurate roll to
  reduce costs of elections and also deter voters
  from casting multiple votes.

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Current Project

• 2008-2011
• Funded by the Australian Agency for International
  Development (AusAID)

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Six main objectives

• Build and maintain the confidence and trust of
  governments and electoral management bodies in
  the Project
• Identify appropriate electoral reforms for
  Pacific countries, where necessary Identify
  necessary reforms of voter registration systems
• Assist in the development of civics curricula for
  primary and secondary schools Assist Pacific
  countries in establishing electoral education
  materials and programs for use in educating the
  public

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• Introduce/showcase and run BRIDGE Project
  Training Modules for Pacific electoral
  administrators, members of Parliament and civil
  servants to improve their understanding and
  knowledge of the importance of elections,
  election systems and polling processes
• Deliver BRIDGE methodology short-term training
  courses to Pacific countries for electoral
  administrators and other persons involved in
  elections, as well as the media, and
• Monitor and observe parliamentary elections in
  the Pacific and report to governments

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Thematic activities

• Research into Improving Electoral Systems and
  Performance
• Civic Education Needs Assessment
• Professional Training
• Election Monitoring and
• Pacific Islands Electoral Systems Information
  Dissemination.

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Networks

• Regional
• USP member states
• PIANZEA (Pacific Islands, Australia and New
  Zealand Electoral Administrators Network) member
  states
• BRIDGE (Building Resources in Democracy
  Governance and Elections) Project

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• International
• BRIDGE Project
• International IDEA
• Global Elections Organizations

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1. Research

• ELECTORAL SYSTEMS REFERENCE GROUP MEETING
  SCHEDULED FOR 20-25 October, PORT VILA, VANUATU
• The purpose of this meeting was to bring
  electoral administrators and officials plus
  electoral systems specialists together to look at
  what current systems are offering and put
  thoughts together for future effective democracy
  and elections in the Pacific.

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Lessons Learnt

• Democracy and elections are sensitive issues to
  governments, electoral administrators and
  officials, political parties and people.
  Therefore the choice of participants as well as
  topics must be carefully researched.
• Consultation with existing networks and contacts
  on any new proposal or event is healthy in
  strengthening and maintaining a strong
  partnership. It is also a vital component that
  will ensure the sustainability of the work
  carried out by the Democracy and Elections
  Project team.
• Consult with BRIDGE workshop participants the
  topics of the ERG

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Proposals for the future

• Incorporate other forms of consultation/survey
  into the training workshop program, ie, schedule
  them for evenings.
• Make proposals to the PIANZEA Network Secretariat
  on important topics on electoral systems to be
  discussed at the next PIANZEA network meet in
  April 2009.
• Develop survey questionnaires for BRIDGE workshop
  participants feedback
• Incorporate evening sessions for consultation
  with BRIDGE workshop participants on topics of
  the ERG

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2. CIVIC EDUCATION NEEDS ASSESSMENT (CENA)

• A total of three (3) CENA were conducted in
• Cook Islands,
• Tuvalu, and
• Vanuatu
• The Cook Islands CENA was pioneer and the lessons
  learnt assisted in redesigning the CENA
  Questionnaire template and approach for Tuvalu
  and Vanuatu. There are lessons learnt from each
  country and the project considers these positive
  attributes for further improvement in the design
  and delivery of the CENA in remaining countries.

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Lessons Learnt

• Design a questionnaire that can be read and
  easily understood by Pacific people.
• Questionnaire should have age, level of
  education, number of languages spoken, ethnicity,
  what type of medium of communication suits each
  respondents, etc. to help project design and
  disseminate both generic and country specific
  civic education curriculum and materials.

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Lessons Learnt cont

• Survey must include samples from all levels of
  the community, ie, urban, rural, remote,
  educated, under educated, youths, voters,
  students, children, women, indigenous
  communities, chiefs, churches, other religions,
  business houses, political parties, government
  ministries and departments especially of
  education, all ethnic groups in a country.
• Questionnaire should be targeted to primary and
  secondary school children.

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Proposals for future

• Allocate at least three (3) weeks for CENA in
  each country context.
• Ensure inclusive national survey involving all
  levels and groups in society.
• Involve primary and secondary school children in
  the survey.

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3. BRIDGE REGIONAL PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
WORKSHOPS

• A total of seven (7) regional training workshops
  were in the 2008 work program.
• Five (5) workshops were conducted
• 2 Train-the-Facilitators (TtF),
• Media and Elections,
• Civic Education
• Gender and Elections.

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Output

• 114 participants from around the Pacific were
  trained.
• 39 participants of the TtF became semi accredited
  facilitators,
• 7 participants received full accreditation, and
• 2 accredited active facilitators were promoted to
  Level One.

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Lessons Learnt

• Seven (7) regional workshops in six (6) months is
  too many, too costly and time consuming for three
  (3) member team to effectively and efficiently
  deliver in other four areas of the project.
• Conduct of national workshops will build capacity
  of more people in country both in terms of
  upgrading and accrediting facilitators and
  exposing more people to BRIDGE methodology and
  also training in democracy and electoral
  governance.
• Use of accredited BRIDGE facilitators outside of
  Democracy and Elections Project is costly.

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Proposals for future

• Conduct only one training workshop every three
  months.
• Conduct national or sub-regional training
  workshop rather than regional ones.
• National training should be linked to needs
  identified by each country during BRIDGE scoping
  mission, from CENA and also election observation
  reports.
• Secure accredited expert facilitators 6-12 months
  before each training.
• Build facilitator capacity in the project.

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4. ELECTION MONITORING

• Amongst the USP Member countries - Tonga had
  general elections in April, Niue in May and
  Vanuatu in September
• Pacific region under the PIANZEA Network (USP
  became a member in 2005) other elections due in
  2008 were New Zealand, Palau, Guam and other US
  territories.

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Lessons Learnt

• The USP Democracy and Elections Project team is
  too small to be able to conduct a fair
  observation or monitoring mechanism of the
  election process in each country.
• Use existing domestic in-country networks to
  monitor the election process.
• Election management bodies in the Pacific share
  generic problems, many are administrative and
  thus do not require legal redress. There is so
  much to share and actually learn from each other
  by visiting and observing and learning from what
  the others do effectively to strengthen their
  own.

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Proposals for future

• Develop a network of domestic monitors or
  observers for monitoring the processes of
  elections through partnership with USP campuses
  or centers, ombudsman offices, branches of
  Transparency International and other civil
  society groups in each country.
• Partnerships should be negotiated and established
  at least 6-12 months before the election year so
  that domestic monitors or observers could be
  selected and trained.
• Invite three members of the election management
  body to observe the polling process with the USP
  Democracy and Elections Project to be the
  secretariat at least 5 months before the election
  month.

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5. PACIFIC ISLANDS ELECTORAL SYSTEMS INFORMATION
DISSEMINATION (PIESID)

• The primary objective of this activity is to
  store data on Pacific Islands electoral systems
  in the appropriate section of the Governance
  Portal which has been developed by the
  Governance Program in the School of Governance
  and Development Studies.

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Types information/data

• Election Results of all elections held so far in
  their country soft copies if available or
  national/other websites that the Democracy
  Elections Project team can access results from
• Election Reports (both Electoral Commission ,
  domestic and international observer reports or
  other reports) of all elections held so far in
  their country soft copies if available or
  national/other websites that the Democracy
  Elections Project team can access reports from

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Cont

• Constitutions and Electoral Acts plus all
  amendments and all regulations to date hard
  copies if available or national/other websites
  that the Democracy Elections Project team can
  access these documents from
• Party posters, policy platforms, etc.
• Full package of your countrys Voter Education
  curriculum, materials, brochures, posters, video,
  DVD, Liftouts, etc.

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Lessons Learnt

• 1. Because of the lack of permanent and
  independent Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs)
  and electoral staff throughout the Pacific
  region, more concerted efforts must be made to
  retrieve information/data and materials and to
  store them on the Governance Portal using both
  formal and informal networks.

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• 2. There is a need for EMBs around the Pacific to
  update their own electoral data/information and
  be more information access-friendly. The need for
  FOI legislation in this regard cannot be over-
  emphasized as this will greatly enhance
  information/data gathering efforts by the Project
  team.

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• 3. Gaining the trust and confidence of EMB
  officials and government officials in the Pacific
  region through networking, training and advocacy
  will help to strengthen the Project teams
  sustainable efforts at retrieving
  information/data and materials and at building
  the electoral database for the region.

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Proposals for future

• 1. Use networks, both formal and informal, to
  sustain the Project teams efforts at information
  gathering in 2009 by visiting EMBs, writing to
  the heads of EMBs again, following up and
  soliciting the assistance of EMB staff that have
  attended this years BRIDGE trainings/workshops
  and also those that will attend the two BRIDGE
  foundation modules scheduled for 2009, and
  through other means.

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• 2. Allocate more time and resources to focus on
  and consolidate this activity in 2009. This year,
  the BRIDGE training workshops utilized a
  considerable amount of the Project teams time,
  resources and energy, resulting in the neglect of
  other activities. Being understaffed also was a
  major contributing factor to the inability of the
  Project team in meeting all the expected
  outputs/outcomes.

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Conclusion

• The period July to December 2008 has been busy
  for the Democracy and Elections Project team in
  terms of planning, administering and delivering
  regional BRIDGE professional training,
  undertaking Civic Education Needs Assessment
  (CENA), Election Monitoring and also attempting
  to collect and compile electoral data for
  dissemination via website.
• Despite many challenges, the team was able to
  accomplish the completion of most of the target
  activities.