Lessons for the UK in electoral integrity
When do elections meet international standards of electoral integrity? What happens when elections fail to do so? And what can be done to mitigate these problems? The Electoral Integrity Project aims to answer these questions, and in this post, the project’s director Pippa Norris maps out the integrity of elections across the world over the past two years.
Vilnius, Lithuania – where the world’s best election was held in 2014 (Flavijus, CC BY NC SA 2.0)
Issues about the integrity of UK elections have become a major concern in the run-up to the general election. In recent contests, questions have arisen over insecure postal ballots, proxy voting, and fraudulent practices. The May 7th 2015 UK general election will provide a further test case followingwarnings by the Electoral Commission of ‘ethnic kinship’ voting in British Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, a practice thought to make these areas particularly vulnerable to electoral fraud.
The UK is not alone in these concerns. The issue is perhaps best exemplified by partisan divisions in the United States over Republican allegations of voter fraud (impersonation) and Democratic claims of voter suppression. But the Florida disease has become contagious in other Anglo-American democracies, generating controversies about the Fair Elections Act in Canada and lost ballot boxes in Australia. Reforms to the process of electoral administration are also currently under debate in Ireland.
The consequences of irregularities are even more serious elsewhere in the world. The recent six week postponement of Nigeria’s presidential election, and delays in distributing voter ID cards, have triggered protests and violence.
Elsewhere contentious elections have sparked massive street protests in Cambodia, a military coup d’étatin Thailand, bloody conflict in 2007 in Kenya, and the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
But how do we know when complaints about electoral malpractices reflect genuine flaws and failures, and when they are false claims stoked by sore losers? When do new types of ‘convenience’ voting in Britain lead to security flaws and fraudulent practices? How will the UK general election stack up against contests in other Western democracies – and around the world?
The Electoral Integrity Project
To assess these issues, the Electoral Integrity Project based at Harvard and Sydney Universities has just released a new report and dataset for The Year in Elections 2014.
Expert assessments evaluate the state of the world’s elections each year. The third release of the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) data-set covers 127 national parliamentary and presidential contests held from 1 July 2012 to 31 December 2014 in 107 countries worldwide. More elections will be evaluated as they are held in future years.
Evidence is gathered from a global survey of 1,429 domestic and international election experts (with a response rate of 29%). Immediately after each contest, the quality of each election is evaluated based on 49 indicators. Responses are clustered into eleven stages occurring throughout the electoral cycle and then summed to construct an overall 100-point expert Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) index and ranking.
The world map of electoral integrity identifies the best and worst elections around the globe during 2014.
The global map of electoral integrity, 2012-2014
Source: Electoral Integrity Project. 2015. The expert survey of Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, Release 3 (PEI-3). A dynamic version of the map and details about the categories are available online.
Failed elections
- During 2014, the five worst elections worldwide were in Egypt, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Bahrain and Syria (respectively), all of which failed to meet international standards.
- In the second round of the Afghanistan presidential election on 5th April 2014, for example, a bitter dispute about alleged fraud “on an industrial scale”, resolved only by an eventual UN/US brokered power-sharing arrangement, undermined confidence in the process and outcome.
- In Syria, the presidential election on 3rd June 2014 was attempted in the midst of a bloody civil war and deep humanitarian crisis where polling did not take place in rebel areas and an estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes.
Contests meeting international standards
- By contrast, during 2014, the five best elections around the globe were in Lithuania (ranked 1st),Costa Rica, Sweden, Slovenia and Uruguay (respectively).
US Congressional elections
- Compared with 127 contests covered in PEI-3 since 2012, it is striking that in the United States, the 2012 presidential election (ranked 42nd) and the 2014 Congressional elections (ranked 48th) scored lowest among all Western democracies.
- Experts expressed concern about US electoral laws and voter registration procedures, both areas of heated partisan debate, as well as partisan gerrymandering of district boundaries and the deregulation of campaign finance. As a result, the US mid-term contests last year were ranked as similar in quality to elections in Colombia and Bulgaria.
What drives electoral integrity?
- Electoral integrity is generally strengthened by three factors; democracy, development, andpower‐sharing constitutions. Longer experience over successive contests usually consolidates democratic practices, deepens civic cultures, and builds the capacity of professional electoral management bodies. Economic development provides the resources and technical capacity for professional electoral administration. Power‐sharing institutions, such as the free press and independent parliaments, serve as watch-dogs curbing malpractices.
- Systematic cross-national research has established these general patterns but still several important exceptions can be observed.
- States in Africa and the Middle East usually face the greatest risks of failed elections, as shown by Mauritania, Iraq, Egypt and Bahrain. But there are clear exceptions within these regions, notably the successful Tunisianpresidential and legislative elections, and fairly well‐rated contests in South Africa.
- The most serious risks using arise during the electoral cycle from disparities in political finance and media coverage during the campaign. These stages are assessed by experts as far more widespread problems than malpractices occurring on election‐day or its aftermath, such as ballot stuffing or fraud.
Problems during the electoral cycle
Note: Each stage in the electoral cycle was evaluated using 100-point scales.
Source: Electoral Integrity Project. 2015. The expert survey of Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, Release 3 (PEI-3).
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More details can be found from new books by Pippa Norris on Why Electoral Integrity Matters and Why Elections Fail, bothfrom Cambridge University Press, New York. This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit or the LSE. It originally appeared on the LSE General Election 2015 blog. Please read our comments policy before posting.
Further information, the complete PEI_3 dataset, a YouTube video presentation, and a copy of the full report can all be downloaded from www.electoralintegrityproject.com
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Pippa Norris is Laureate Research Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard University, and Director of the Electoral Integrity Project. She is also an alumni of the LSE.
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In the tv coverage of the Scottish Referendum Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservative Party stated: “Well, they are not counted till 10 o’clock on the night, but different local authorities had openings around the country. It is illegal to discuss any of that while a ballot is ongoing. So until 10 o’clock no one could talk about it. But there are people in the room who have been sampling those ballot boxes, taking tallies, and their reports have been very positive for us.” This sounds like an explicit admission by a party leader that there was a conspiracy to illegally break the secrecy of voting across the country. In their report on the referendum the the Electoral Commission described this more blandly as: “Significant media coverage was given to allegations that postal voting agents had “sampled” votes at postal vote opening sessions around the country in the days before polling day. The suggestion was that the agents, who were nominated by the registered campaign groups and permitted to attend the sessions to ensure the process was conducted appropriately, had been able to see the outcome for which votes had been cast.” Four of the nine Electoral Commissioners are party nominations and its activities seem more driven by trying to maintain public confidence in the system than addressing electoral integrity problems.
Electoral integrity&failed elections https://t.co/W6rEk9qivb @ElectIntegrity @PippaN15 @democraticaudit will Poland be included in the study?
Lessons for the UK in electoral integrity from Pippa Norris https://t.co/GbVzkSHRsf
Lessons for the #UK in #ElectoralIntegrity https://t.co/S1CZxfx5bI @democraticaudit @PippaN15
Lessons for the UK in electoral integrity – Democratic Audit UK https://t.co/O8a2NlkYrG #wethepeople
Lessons for the UK in electoral integrity https://t.co/p2ltxctlsG
#Arabspring Lessons for the UK in electoral integrity – Democratic Audit UK: Democratic Audit … https://t.co/YvQTHU3pLB #Bahrain #14feb
@PippaN15 Electoral integrity…strengthened by three factors:democracy, development, and power‐sharing constitutions https://t.co/1KKZdSZQKy
Lessons for the UK in electoral integrity, by Pippa Norris https://t.co/oGnnMPtSAb
The problem with varying views of electoral integrity or fair elections is that there is a tendency to ignore serious issues in countries like the UK which effectively compromise a number of elections.
If you take the London Mayor election, only certain candidates are allowed to appear on tv (in what is a tv election, and where the main parties barely ‘canvass’ in the old sense 5% of the electorate). Other parties are barred under “fairness or balance” rules from appearing and are censored out of shot and hearing if they happen to be at meetings. They are then banned from tv advertising which woukld restore the balance to a small degree, and banned by spending rules from writing even just one letter to their constituents. I was told I would be disqualified if I wrote one letter to my constituents. Just one letter! And further I was told that my entry into an appalling and unreadable ‘election booklet’ (straight out of 1950s electioneering in style) would be censored.
If you are banned from appearing on tv in an election where chosen candidates are given millions of pounds worth of free advertorial style media (admittedly tedious) and then banned from writing to your constituents, and your only permitted election communication is censored by the state, it does not appear to be a free and fair election.
But there appears to be precious little concern about this assault on diversity in politics from those in the UK and USA who focus on the minutiae of elections in countries we know to be corrupt already.
It might help if we started looking at our own cosy fixes between state radio and tv and the ‘main’ parties, the backroom meetings that decide to bar diverse candidates because they are now a threat to the elite. And the way they cynically fix the rules to allow the main parties to receive millions of pounds worth of free media while using those same rules to ban diverse forces from managing to be heard. Maybe that is just too much to ask?
A fascinating article by @PippaN15 about electoral integrity worldwide, and lessons thereof for the UK: https://t.co/JvjJ0UjBtR
Lessons for the UK in electoral integrity https://t.co/PZYhBS6rDB