PRESS CONFERENCE ON CD-ROM LAUNCHED BY ADMINISTRATION AND COST OF ELECTIONS PROJECT

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE ON CD-ROM LAUNCHED BY ADMINISTRATION AND COST OF ELECTIONS PROJECT

With multi-party elections taking place for the first time in 51 countries between 1988 and 1998, some people had spoken of a new age of democracy. But the real question, according to Bengt Save-Soderbergh, Secretary-General of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, was whether this new impetus towards elections would last.

A CD-ROM produced by the Administration and Cost of Elections Project (ACE) was one of the keys to sustainability, Mr. Save-Soderbergh added, speaking at a press conference at Headquarters this morning following the CD-ROM's launch.

(The ACE project is the result of a collaboration by the United Nations, the International Foundation for Election Systems and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.)

Harry Neufeld, Project Coordinator for the ACE project, said at the beginning of the conference that the project had been under way for 18 months. Today, the CD-ROM was launched -- the first version of the first-ever collection of information about how elections could be run, what options were available for the various aspects of electoral processes, and the cost implications associated with those options. The project, first discussed in May 1996, marked a very successful collaboration between the three international organizations.

This information resource was much needed, he said, as there was a significant absence of information about options for running elections. There were many ways to run elections, and there were many aspects of electoral democracy that changed from one cultural or economic context to another. Most documentation of electoral processes was done in the context of a particular country or, at most, of a particular culture. The ACE project attempted to look beyond a cultural or a country-specific context and identify what the options were for various aspects of electoral administration worldwide.

He said the CD-ROM contained the equivalent of about 5,000 pages, 3,000 pages of which were text, and 2,000 pages were sample materials contributed by the electoral commissions and authorities of over 100 countries as examples of how various options could be used.

He hoped that the collection would be a living set of documents that would improve and grow over time. The collection was also available at a website -- . At present, the CD-ROM and the website were identical, but it was envisaged that the website would be updated quickly to allow fast access to modifications, whereas new versions of the CD-ROM would

* Revised to correct names of participating organizations.

be produced periodically. The cooperative project would continue with amandate to improve the information in the collection, and to have it translated. Agreements were under way for Russian, Spanish and French versions. He added that to date the project was on time and slightly under budget.

Mr. Save-Soderbergh said one of the first issues his organization had confronted, following its establishment in 1995, was that, while the first generation of elections had been funded heavily by international organizations, bilateral donors and others, international interest and funding for the second, third and the fourth elections would be reduced. How could elections be made affordable and the process be made sustainable? he asked. Could simple mechanisms be devised for doing that? International organizations could not, of course, proscribe a way to register voters or count votes, but they could provide information about options.

The CD-ROM might not look like much, he said, but it was. It was the product of pooled resources and people -- brains and budgets. The next challenge faced by the collaborators was how to make it available, not only to those who ran elections, but also to those involved in the process of designing electoral systems. Such systems were the things that shaped the culture of democracy. Making it available would be no easy task.

Richard Soudriette, President of the International Foundation for Election Systems, said that for a long time those involved in working in elections around the world had recognized that, within the field of public administration, there had been a lack of understanding of the critical nature and the importance of electoral administration as a means of guaranteeing and preserving the transparency and security of the election process. This project was a recognition that electoral administration was a very important field. The ACE CD-ROM was something that would be of assistance to every electoral administrator around the world.

People from all around the world had been involved in writing, providing critiques and providing ideas for the project, he said. As a result, this was the first really comprehensive piece on electoral administration. Collaboration had been the key to the project. The International Foundation for Election Systems had seen the practical need for ACE while working on elections around the world. Even prior to the launch, his organization had used the CD-ROM to reply to inquiries from an electoral commission.

Translation assistance would come from the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute, for Spanish, and from Elections Canada, for French, he added.

Nitin Desai, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, explained that the United Nations was engaged in the exercise because it shared with its collaborative partners the basic objective of promoting democracy. Over the past decade, the Organization had been involved in giving

CD-ROM Press Conference - 3 - 22 October 1998

practical help on the management of electoral processes at the country level, from sending an adviser on legal matters to sending a huge team to run the process. This CD-ROM would be very valuable. The fact that it was compact would help enormously, for instance, by allowing travelling advisers to access information immediately.

In a response to a request for an example of the contents of the CD-ROM, Mr. Neufeld explained that there were three basic methods of registering voters, each with advantages and disadvantages. One could use the periodic list method, establishing centres for registration prior to the election and creating a specific list for it. Such a list must be recreated for every election, it was not always easy to accurately predict when elections would take place, and it was, therefore, very hard to be cost-effective using this method. One could also use a registry of voters -- an ongoing list of voters that was constantly updated. Using this method, lists were easier to create, but the lists were hard to keep current and costly to maintain. The third method, the civil registry, involved using an ongoing list for elections and for a range of other governmental activities. While this method was the most economical method and had proved successful in some countries, in others, such as Canada, he suspected it would prove culturally unacceptable for the Government to maintain such an all-embracing list. The practicalities, benefits and costs of all three options were explained in detail on the CD-ROM.

Mr. Desai reiterated that this was an information resource, designed to help people make decisions, not a prescription of best methods.

In response to a question about where the CD-ROM might be used in the near future, Mr. Save-Soderbergh said he had already held discussions with the Reform Commission of Indonesia, which was very much looking forward to receiving it.

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