How Do We Know a Good Election When We See One?

  Over the last decade, practitioners working on election assistance and observation have made important strides in defining common principles to guide their work, developing more systematic methodologies, and expanding their work to focus increasingly on broader democratization processes. Consensus has emerged that standards for elections should be based on state oblig...
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Legislative and Presidential Elections in Tunisia

The Carter Center established a presence in Tunisia in 2011 and observed both the 2011 National Constituent Assembly elections and the constitution-making process that culminated in the adoption of the constitution in January 2014. The Center’s activities shifted in June 2014 with the formal launch of an election observation mission for the 2014 presidential and legislative el...
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Human Rights and Election Standards

The Carter Center believes greater and more sustained interaction between the election assistance community and intergovernmental human rights systems is needed to promote electoral reform initiatives, strengthen democratic elections and governance, and foster the evolution of relevant international law on elections. To this end, the Center plans to convene a series of confere...
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100 Elections Observed

In May 2015, observer teams deployed to Guyana, on the northeast coast of South America, for what would be The Carter Center's 100th observed election. Read the Center's statements and reports on Guyana's elections here. Twenty-six years earlier, in May 1989, The Carter Center sent its first-ever team of election observers to Panama, where their work exposed General Manuel N...
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Reports and Publications

The Democratic Election Standards initiative's handbooks and other thematic publications, along with the Democracy Program's final reports from election observation missions, contribute to shared knowledge within the election observation community and draw attention to key issues.Election Reports This page is dedicated to the recent publications relating to the Democratic Ele...
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Templates and Training

The Carter Center has developed many resources to help citizens and election observers apply an obligations-based framework to real elections around the world. Through a variety of materials, the Carter Center’s resources provide a foundation of knowledge for citizens and election observers, while contributing to the broader goals of DES. Templates The reporting templates be...
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ELMO

ELMO is the Carter Center's open-source mobile data collection and reporting system, built specifically with election observation in mind. ELMO, which stands for ELection MOnitoring, allows observers to submit evaluations of an electoral process using checklists in real time to mission headquarters. The system enables mission staff to consolidate and analyze observer reports,...
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EOS

The Election Obligations and Standards (EOS) database is a searchable resource that consolidates nearly 200 sources of public international law related to human rights and elections. Originally created in August 2010 as the Database of Obligations for Democratic Elections, EOS is a user-friendly tool that helps observers, as well as citizens and election officials, identify s...
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