I forget who it was who said; "Democracy is not in the voting, but in the counting."  Before we get too preachy about monitoring elections elsewhere, I think Canadians need to get our own house in order.  

The Jan.2006 Canadian election was determined by one man, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, who sent a MID-ELECTION fax message in which he FALSELY implicated Ralph Goodale and the Liberals by ILLEGALLY informing an NDP MP that a "criminal investigation" was initiated into a suspected leak of Finance Ministry information re income trust taxation.  The last poll before this story entered the news placed the Libs ahead 10 %, and the first poll after the story entered the news placed the Conservatives ahead 10%.  Ralph Goodale was eventually absolved of all wrongdoing, and Zaccardelli was rewarded by Harper with an appointment to Interpol, after he was accused by fellow RCMP officers of lying to a Parliamentary Committee--Chaired by a Conservative--investigating the pilfering of RCMP pension funds. (As RCMP Commissioner through the entire Maher Arar debacle, Zaccardelli was also responsible for the creation of Arar'a false "terror" file, its illegal sharing with US authorities, Arar's "rendering" to torture in Syria, and leaks of Arar's false "confessions" gained by torture to the media while the Canadian government dragged its feet on his safe return.)

Knowing what I know about the 2006 election, I decided to observe the counting at the poll where I voted in the most recent election.  At one of the two polls in the room, the counters were totally confused, and I personally had to draw their attention to two mistakes, where a candidate other than the one on the ballot received a check mark under his name. (Maybe just coincidence, but both miscounts had been given to the eventual winner.)  The poll manager, who apparently had some previous experience, was complaining aloud that poll procedures were more complicated than before.  She seemed exasperated by the whole affair and mused how easy her job would be with an electronic voting machine.  I asked if she knew that Both of George Bush's elections were stolen via vote machines, among other things.  She didn't.

Another interesting point:  The poll manager was VERY surprised when I asked if I could monitor.  She said no one had ever asked her before, and had to consult her Elections Canada rule book.  She was impressed with the quote about democracy being in the counting, and wondered why more people aren't interested in monitoring.  There were Liberal and NDP party monitors there, but it was ME who caught the miscounts.

So, before we send any more election monitors to other countries, we need to prove that our own elections are up to snuff.  The recent coronation of pro-war Harvard professor Ignatieff by the party elite, behind closed doors and without due process, should raise some flags for Canadians.  We don't want to infect other countries with our disrepute.

G.Rajaram

Monitoring of By-elections is very much essetial and it requires lot of new tactics.  Very recently in Thirumangalam Assemly constituency in Tamilnadu, India, by election was conducted.  Wide spread use of money power was reported in almost all press.  The Election Commission is worried about the fact that nearly 30 per cent of votes were polled only at the last one hour.  the question now is what new tactice can be applied to avoid money power and impersonisation in voting.

I agree with the view that election monitoring can actually legitimise a dictatorship. This has been the case in Zimbabwe from 1980 until the 2000 parliamentary elections.

When we talk about monitoring an election or an election process we should look at the context and the content under which those elections take place. In the Zimbabwean context we needed to look and examine the political environment which was replete with militarisation of state institutions including those responsible for the administration of the election, poltical violence by the state and the ruling party, muzzling of the media, plethora of repressive laws meant to curtail opposition and civil society activitie.

Unless the administrative aspect which deals with the need need for an independent electoral body, number of polling stations, number of ballot papers and the finances to run the polls and evironmental issues to do with the observation of the rule of law, election processes and monitoring in the case of Zimbabwe were meant to legitimise the Mugabe dictatorship.

In this regard election monitoring should be done in a situation where the political environment is democratised and the administration of that election is transparent. When Mugabe agreed to some partial reforms on these two fronts and then allowed the Souther African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) members states to observe and not to monitor the March 2008 elections, he lost the poll. Upon realising that the reforms made him to lose the elections, he renaged on all those reforms and went on a violent campaign of rape, murder, arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and abductions against his percieved opponents and the country remains in a political limbo with no legitimate government since March 2008.

Domestic nonpartisan election monitoring organizations can -- and often do -- cooperate both inside their countties and across borders. 

Cooperation inside countries takes place within coalitions and complementary initiatives form for election-day coverage inside and outside polling stations.  It also takes place in pre-election and post election periods.  From NDI experience in assisting nonpartisan election monitoring groups in over 70 counties, as this work develops over time, more elements of the election process are monitored, and specialization allows for additional types cooperation.  For example, media monitoring, campaign finance monitoring, voter list monitoring, political violence monitoring, monitoring of electoral complaints before election commissions and courts may suit different organizations that share information and interests, while some groups seek to address the overall process and can make use of the other's work. 

Without going too far into detail, campaign finance monitoring in the US is conducted at the national level by a small number of group that meet and discuss common interests.  Some concentrate on different aspects of the issue, and they seek common points in election reform.  In Zimbabwe, the main election monitoring effort is conducted by ZESN, which is a joint effort of human rights and other civic organizations.  In Nigeria's recent elections, labor unions, civic groups and the TMG (a long established organization that itself started as a coalition) used a common election day observation form and shared findings, though they did not produce a unnified statement.  They, plus the Nigerian Bar Association, continue to cooperative in seeking electoral reform.  In Nicaragua, a university based organization monitored the voter registration process, while a number of groups have jointly developed an electoral regorm agenda and others have monitored polling stations, while Ethica & Transparencia has conducted quick counts (or PVTS).  There are many such examples arounf the globe.

Cross border cooperation takes sevel forms.  In Latin America and the Caribbean, election monitoring groups developed a cooperation accord, the Acuerdo de Lima, to share information and attend each others elections to offer assistance and solidarity.  They send people with technical expertise to help, and leaders from different groups join press conferences with the country's monitoeing groups to show that they believe that findings are credible.  The European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), which has member groups from central and eastern Europe and Eurasia also shares information, and it mounts international election observation missions.  The Asian Association for Free Elections (ANFREL) is made up of domestic monitoring groups and also sends international observers to elections.  The SADC Election Support Network (SADC-ESN) develops capacity building efforts with its member groups.  There are other examples as well, which I have worked with through NDI.  A global network of domestic election monitors, with over 120 organizations and regional associations, is developing for information sharing.    

Cooperation across borders is a hallmark of domestic election monitoring; the groups have done much to spead nonpartisan principles and monitoring techniques from the beginning of this activity in the 1980s. 

---Pat Merloe---

Elections by their nature are an exercise  of a plethora of human rights in a democracy. There two therefore go hand in hand.

When one talks about election monitoring it basically means how the right to vote is practised and promoted in that context. In order to exercise the right to elect representatives in any constitutional democracy that is founded on the rule of law there is need to realise freedoms of expression, assembly, life, association, religion, opinion and other fundamental rights as expoused in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The monitoring of an election in my view is meant to see the de facto and de jure exercise of these rights. In the event that  lives are lost through extra-judicial killings as was the case in my country Zimbabwe in the June 2008 presidential election run-off where over 200 opposition activists were murdered by the regime of Robert Mugabe then that process and its outcome  is neither free nor fai.

Monitoring of elections are allow people to meaure human rights in existence, practice and their promotion in upholding democratic practices. The whole purpose of monitoring and observing elections is meant to make sure that human rights are protected, see the challenges in the electoral framework and rectify them with the view of building a norm compliant society that is premised on the rule of law.

This relationship between a election monitoring and human rights is one issue that countries ruled by dictators such as Zimbabwe struggle to establish becuase most repressive regimes do not want to be scrutinized on the way they run the affairs of the State.