Election observation in a pandemic: A new reality

In modern reality, the COVID-19 pandemic has radically affected all spheres of public life, including electoral technologies and processes. It also became urgent to review the significance of certain electoral institutions and processes, which by now were already perceived as integral, and their existence was considered unshakable. We are talking, first of all, about election observation. Research by Susan Hyde and Judith Kelly was among the first attempts to systematize and quantify the impact of international observers on the quality of elections. The authors proved that the presence of international observers can reduce the number of violations of electoral legislation, although only on the election day and not in all cases the same. Whether their presence has any long-term consequences has not yet been clearly determined. The starting point for increasing criticism of the role of international surveillance was the election in Kenya in 2017. Questions remain relevant: If election monitoring is limited to short-term effects, is this enough to justify the costs of this practice? Where should observers go, because today not only developing democracies are struggling with uncertainty about the quality of elections? The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the previously emerging crisis phenomena in international election observation: a change in standards from the promotion of democracy to “worldcracy”; the bias of international organizations and the difference in their strategic interests; lagging behind the use of new technologies, including monitoring of social networks; dominance over local observers; and the contradiction of the conclusions of individual election observation missions to court decisions. International election monitoring, in addition to solving the above-mentioned problems, must adapt to the new conditions associated with COVID-19. This adaptation should include the development and active implementation of election observation guidelines during COVID-19. In the long term, the sustainability of election observation depends on the institutional strengthening of observer groups formed by NGOs within countries. International missions need to gradually resort to the wider use of online technologies in election observation. For the full use of the potential of international observers, priority should be given to sending not short-term, but long-term monitoring missions. Follow-up missions between elections are also crucial to ensure the implementation of the observers’ recommendations. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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