The Electoral Knowledge Network typically defines two categories of election observation. First, short-term observation (STO), generally encompassing election climate, preceding days, voting day and the count. Second, long-term monitoring (LTO) involves assessing holistically the entire election process, including consolidation of results. It is an intensive assignment where team work is essential and yet many of the people who seek to do this work have had little experience of such joint efforts. This article explores the author's personal experiences with being an election observer, and offers some tips and reflections for those who may want to do this work themselves.

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Every stage of potential recruitment is competitive but like every career path there are ways to success. As for the rewards, these are professionally fulfilling. Financially, the pay for short and long-term observers will vary greatly from country to country. At the Short-term (STO) or Long-term (LTO) level you could easily find yourself getting only basic expenses while you are teamed with someone from a country which pays its observers a full salary. At the worst end of the scale there are countries who only refund incurred expenses after the event. I have noticed it is sometimes a bone of contention where the financial package offered from country to country differs so much between the observer team. One STO might be accounting for every basic expense and getting reimbursed later, while the team partner has a generous financial package for deployment and is also getting a full salary and benefits-based on the level of seniority of the last post served. This is a recipe for conflict but is inevitable due to the way observer missions are comprised. For the most part, countries are asked to supply observers and use their own country formula for renumeration. Even in EU missions, where everyone gets the same per diem of expenses, some observers may also get a salary from their own government, in addition.

Professionally-run elections which are transparent and give all individuals or parties an equal chance are at the heart of modern democracy. These days international election observers are wary of the words “free and fair” as it is based on too many assumptions which fly in the face of practical realities. You could have had the most professionally-executed vote in many a country but the political system itself is so skewed or (frankly) undemocratic – there is no genuine opposition. What the state party or long-time dictator tells you is “free and fair” could have the best electoral administration in the world, and still have no genuine democracy. In short, the process of election of the one-party state could be so precise, every vote is accounted for, and the political system itself effectively neutralizes genuine opposition. The modern dictator could pay for the most sophisticated polling system in the world but if there is no genuine opposition- all that election administration is useless. The equipment is impressive, the tabulations awesome and rapid if not instantaneous, but without a genuinely democratic political landscape to match the technicalities of the election administration, we might as well just have state-elected officials.

The modern International Election Observer is much more focused on whether a “level playing field”  (with useful democratic components) exists to promote multi-party or multi-candidate democracy, and allow genuine freedom of choice. That presupposes an enormous amount of groundwork to ensure popular confidence that there is democracy, to encourage political plurality and create a genuine contest where it is possible for the popular vote to make a difference. Thus, professional international election observation is multi-faceted and multi-layered, and based on complex and continuously evolving election administration methodologies. Ideally the operations of large international election observation organisations are centred on the best principles of election administration. The field operations will also continuously evolve to allow the organisation to achieve the best possible job in capturing the performance of the election administration. By that I mean we have been on a journey from simple paper note-books with narrative comments, to paper election observation questionnaires, to these questionnaires being captured by the use of electronic transmitting pens (combined with smart phones) to computer-tablets and finally to reporting applications based around mobile phone applications. Communication security has also improved.

Modern election observation will normally involve a careful arrangement of questions which will allow (as far as possible) a 360-degree view of the entire election process. It is also likely to involve a combination of long-term observation of the pre-election and post-election process, and more intensive, locally-based focus on the election week itself. These efforts are likely to concentrate on immediate pre-election planning in a region, local polling, and tabulation and finally consolidation of results at a district and local level. It also generally means that a country receiving an international election observation mission should be genuinely open. For example, it should possess an open media and journalistic community who can report untrammelled on all these events without fear of the secret police or social censure. When I first started this work in 1984 there were plenty of elections but many of them were (frankly) non-contests in which the party or president was at the least a “sure thing” or even worse, the only hat in the ring. Discreetly observers would be followed everywhere by intelligence operatives. Now elections are so prolific it was reported that in 2024 there were the largest volume of national and local elections ever seen in the history of elections. Our continuously evolving language in describing these elections is at the heart of the reportage of an international election observer.

It is worth noting that many of the concepts we associate with modern democracy have a rich and ancient history. Take for example medieval Venice where elections to appoint the Doge, the supreme leader of the Venetian Merchants Court, invented the ballot. These first ballots were metal balls, not paper votes. What made them unique and effective was that they fitted covertly into metal boxes which allowed no-one to know how the voter had voted – one of the first large-scale examples of voter secrecy.

The concept of international election observer has been with us now in a serious way for several decades, but if truth were told, it too is almost as old as electoral democracy itself. No sooner had we introduced what we hoped to persuade our public and the international community as democratic elections than each country began to compare........

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