Challenging the Norms and Standards of Election Administration

Unlike the other papers in this series, this one does not attempt to provide a consensus view of the experts on international best practices. Electronic voting is still a relatively young technology, and no consensus has yet emerged. Instead, this paper offers suggestions to international donors about how they should evaluate and respond to requests for help implementing electronic voting systems. It specifically addresses direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems and their implementation in new, fragile, and transitional democracies (for the purposes of this paper, “new, fragile, and transitional democracies” refers to countries which hold or plan to hold elections but have a limited or nonexistent history of successful free and fair elections).