All animals are equal,
But some are more equal than others
Animal Farm. George Orwell

Of course we want our freedom, who would not?
But you know how these things begin,
First you give your brother some power and you trust him to take care of you.
Before long it begins to unravel,
And he forgets that he is your brother and the noose slowly winds around your neck.
We should have seen it coming though,
I know, when they began to change their clothes and dress like our former masters.
But we were lulled…by that first rush of sublime indifference…the joy of being free.

Then the stories they would tell confused us, divided us,
And then the violence slowly set in.
So now we have been penned,
We are tied to leaders we cannot admire,
People we fear, who misuse us and throw our land into disarray.
Perhaps there is some hope now,
There is some power because now we can see,
Now we know what has gone wrong
The first step, to see the gate that shuts you in
As you begin to plan the way of escape…”

– Sheila Ochugboju

Transparent voting saves lives

Many post-election conflicts could be avoided if more attention was paid to laws and procedures during vote counts
• Michael Meyer-Resende and Michel Paternotre
• Guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 August 2009 16.00 BST

“It does not matter who votes, it matters who counts,” Joseph Stalin is said to have remarked. While Stalin did not practise democracy, he understood political power. Elections are most easily stolen at the point when votes are counted and tallied. This can be impossible to prove, as the recent elections in Iran have shown.

While the published results of Iran’s presidential election are widely disputed, claims of fraud have been difficult to substantiate because so many steps took place behind closed doors. The only remedy against this increasingly fashionable method of electoral fraud is transparency, which should be promoted forcefully in the interests of democracy and conflict prevention.

Lack of transparency in elections has already cost many lives and undermined political stability beyond Iran. More than a thousand Kenyans were killed in violence that erupted after the December 2007 elections when public confidence in the official results was undermined by a murky process of adding up votes.

Earlier that year at least 200 Nigerians died in violence related to elections whose results were called “magic” by the EU’s chief election observer.

Two years earlier, dozens were killed and thousands arrested in Ethiopia in unrest caused by a lack of trust in the official election results. And the Georgian “rose revolution” in 2003 was triggered by a lack of confidence in the electoral outcome.

Making sure that election results are transparent requires just a few simple measures. Representatives of all parties and candidates, as well as independent observers, must be allowed to be present during the counting. And that does not mean “present” in the Belarusian way, where they are only permitted to watch from some metres away. At the end of the count the representatives and observers should be given official forms that certify the result of the polling station, which they should sign or use to record any complaints about the process. The official results should also be immediately and publicly displayed at each polling station so that anyone can take note.

Transparent counting is only the first step, however, because the results of all polling stations have to be added up. This is where it’s tempting to simply manipulate the numbers. Therefore the same rules of transparency must apply. Party and candidate representatives, along with independent observers, must be permitted to be present and official forms with detailed results of all polling stations must be handed out and publicly posted. These rules of transparency must be guaranteed at all levels of the tally (local, regional, national). In addition, detailed results from all levels should be published on the internet so anyone can verify if the overall results were calculated honestly and correctly.

On election night all eyes should be on the counting to determine whether laws and procedures are adhered to and whether the numbers add up. Alas, too often the media, observers and party representatives pay little attention. Tired after a long election day, they relax and wait for the official results to come in. It is like football fans switching off the TV during extra time, trusting they will learn the result from the next day’s newspaper. Journalists, political parties and candidates, as well as observers, should be better trained and equipped to follow the vote counts and tallying of results at all levels.

Long before election day, more attention needs to be paid to ensuring that laws and technical arrangements for counting ensure maximum transparency, in order to pre-empt any attempt at fraud. During last year’s elections in Zimbabwe, a change in the law requiring polling station results to be publicly displayed enabled citizens to take photographs of these forms, which, when added together, showed that Morgan Tsvangirai won in the first round. After much procrastination, the election commission had to accept his victory in the face of such evidence.

The international community spends millions of dollars a year to support elections, but has not focused sufficiently on the results process. More attention and resources should be given to determining clear and detailed criteria for a transparent process.

Counting votes honestly and transparently is not difficult or expensive, as Liberia’s election commission proved in the 2005 presidential elections. When the defeated candidate raised concerns about the accuracy of the results, a tense situation threatened to turn violent. Election officials, supported by the UN, averted a crisis through transparency, patiently briefing the media on a daily basis and promptly posting all polling station results and official forms on the internet, where they remain available to this day. Liberia proved that a transparent vote count is not a luxury that only rich democracies can afford, but a necessity which can prevent violent conflict. Liberians saved lives and their country’s stability by conducting a transparent election. Let others follow their example.

Michael Meyer-Resende and Michel Paternotre work for Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based group promoting political participation