Communication key in early voting says election specialist

Transcript

An international constitutional and election specialist, Andrew Ladley, says the practice of early voting before a general election is common around the world and a way of increasing participation.

Fiji's elections authorities have called on about 66,000 voters, many of them in remote areas, to cast their vote early at about 550 venues before the main election day of September 17th.

Several political parties have complained the prepolling plan was sprung on them, hampering their campaigns and election scrutineering plans.

They also say it's caught voters unaware.

Dr Ladley told Sally Round clear communication is key for early voting.

ANDREW LADLEY : The normal mechanism in democracies is that it's advised very well in advance, everything is transparent, there's no surprises, it's announced months often years in advance in legislation when precisely pre-polling or advanced voting can take place, and there's no surprise, there's lots of communication.  Where things are done without communication, a suspicion emerges, particularly where they are being done in a slightly unusual ways. There was a recent general election in Zimbabwe last year where pre-polling was used absolutely clearly to allow double voting in effect. Large numbers of security forces voted and then were allowed to vote again because there was no means of checking whether they'd voted, so the opposition was up in arms saying this is a mechanism of allowing fraud. So although pre-polling, advance voting is extremely common, the way that it's done ... openly, transparently, allowing everybody to participate ... will determine whether or not people are suspicious of it or welcome it.   

SALLY ROUND: In Fiji, 10% of registered voters are being asked to cast their votes early.  Is that an unusually large percentage?

AL: It's not necessarily a large percentage of voters who vote early in other democratic elections. In this case it's slightly unusual because it's a very specifically directed 10% which appears to represent some calculation of where precisely people have to vote and who precisely has to vote, whereas normally this is being done on the basis that people can choose, and rather then the percentage being chosen by the electoral authorities.  So this is slightly unusual because it's directed and because of the scale of it which is quite a large amount. But in Germany for example, 20 percent of people will vote early, so it's not just the percentage, it's the question of the clarity, integrity and transparency of the communication process which means that opposition parties, indeed all participants, will say 'this is all fine and is a means of allowing inclusion' or 'we are suspicious about where this has come from and nobody told us'.

SR: So does scrutiny have to be particularly tight then in a pre-polling period, to avoid perceptions, to avoid suspicions.

AL:  It's a matter of transparency and also of course all parts of an election where people are particularly nervous about its integrity should be carefully scrutinised, and it's very difficult to scrutinise polling in remote stations especially over three weeks as opposed to a concentrated vote on election day where election agents, party agents and so on can go and watch and everybody is observing. So the integrity mechanisms are important and where this works well, as in most democracies, they have mechanisms to check on double voting  or whether people are registered and so on and so forth, within the electoral system, as well as mechanisms that are available to any parties that want to watch it. But it's much harder if it's being done without notice and by surprise. The key question will be whether the integrity checking mechanisms are up to assuring all participants that this one is fair.