The Year in Elections, 2013

https://sites.google.com/site/electoralintegrityproject4/data-1/expert-survey-2/the-year-in-elections-2013

In many countries, polling day ends with disputes about ballot-box fraud, corruption, and flawed registers. Recent cases such as Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia illustrate these controversies, undermining legitimacy and stability. There are disputes even in long-established democracies such as the US and Britain. But which claims are accurate? And which are false complaints from sore losers?

To address this issue, new evidence gathered by the Electoral Integrity Project compares the risks of flawed and failed elections, and how far countries around the world meet international standards. The EIP is an independent research project based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University, under the direction of Professor Pippa Norris.

This annual report evaluates all national parliamentary and presidential contests occurring in 66 countries worldwide holding 73 election from 1 July 2012 to 31 December 2013 (excluding smaller states with a population below 100,000), from Albania to Zimbabwe. Data is derived from a global survey of 855 election experts. The report includes 73 national parliamentary and presidential contests held worldwide in 66 countries. All continents and regions are represented. Immediately after each contest, the survey asks domestic and international experts to monitor the quality based on 49 indicators. These responses are then clustered into eleven stages occurring during the electoral cycle and summed to construct an overall 100-point expert Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) index and ranking...



... historical experience of democracy did not determine current levels of integrity; as shown in figure 3, the quality of elections was strong in several third wave democracies and emerging economies, including the Republic of Korea, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Lithuania, Argentina, and Mongolia. These countries are highly rated by experts although they only established multiparty systems and competitive democratic elections during the late-1980s and early-1990s.

By contrast, the United States ranked 26th out of 73 elections under comparison worldwide, the lowest score among Western nations, falling into the Moderate Integrity category.