International IDEA's Work - Electoral Issues
Electoral Legal Framework

Recent work on Guidelines for assessing electoral law in the OSCE area, undertaken in conjunction with the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), has helped identify a need for broader work on the issue of acceptable legal frameworks for elections, electoral dispute resolution and accessible information on comparative electoral law. International IDEA will begin the information-gathering phase of this project in the second half of 2001. In the meantime, International IDEA is making available a survey of different electoral dispute resolution systems at archive.idea.int.

International IDEA will begin examining issues surrounding the structure of Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) in Fall 2001. Areas to be explored include:

• Constitutional and legal structures;
  
• Responsibilities of EMBs;
• Financing EMBs;
  
• Accountability of EMBs; and
  
• Sustainability of EMBs.

We also hope to examine initiatives on training and professionalization in the field as well as work towards a methodology for assessing and comparing the costs of elections.

For further information, contact:

Kate Sullivan, Assistant Programme Officer
E-mail: k.sullivan@idea.int

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