Policy Alert # 3 – Armenia to expand proportional representation to municipal elections with tri-partisan bill
Image source: emerging-europe.com MPs from all three parliamentary factions (My Step, Prosperous Armenia, and Bright Armenia) have sponsored Bill G-567 to make changes to how municipal councils and mayors are elected. Specifically, mayors in the largest cities and towns will no longer be directly-elected but chosen by city councils, who will also be given […]
Rapid Assessment: Covid-19 & Elections in Europe
The United Nations have called the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic the biggest international crisis in generations, and it is affecting people’s lives across Europe. As the number of infected people began to mount rapidly, governments put in place a variety of measures to contain the spread of the virus. Many of these measures reflect […]
Recommendations to make 2020 Presidential election safer and fairer during pandemic
Image source: telegrafi.com Members of the non-partisan election observation campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” sent to the Central Election Commission, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court a set of key proposals on this year’s presidential election scheduled for late August. The human rights activists note that their goal is assessing […]
Armenia to expand proportional representation to municipal elections with tri-partisan bill
MPs from all three parliamentary factions have sponsored a bill that seeks to change how municipal councils and mayors are elected. Specifically, mayors in the largest cities and towns will no longer be directly elected but chosen by city councils, who will also be given the power to remove them mid-term. The closed party list […]
Reform success: Verkhovna Rada votes to reduce monetary deposit for Local elections
On April 30, 2020, in a positive development, the Verkhovna Rada voted to significantly lower the monetary deposit for candidates to oblast councils and councils in cities with more than 90,000 voters. The size of the monetary deposit for candidacy to these councils will be reduced by 90 percent – from four minimum monthly salaries for […]
Russian information operation encourages political polarization in Georgia
On April 30, 2020 Facebook removed from its platform Kremlin’s propagandistic information agency News-Front’s pages in Georgian and other languages that they used in various countries. As part of its social media monitoring, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) was studying News-Front Georgia and Facebook accounts connected to it since November, 2019. […]
Possible restriction of citizen observers’ rights under proposed draft act
Statement by the Political Accountability Foundation on the possible restriction of rights of citizen observers We, the Political Accountability Foundation, express our deepest concern with regard to the possible restrictions of rights of citizen observers as a result of the draft „Detailed Rules on the General Election of President of the Republic of Poland in […]
Coordinated domestic network of false media pages on Facebook operating with political intentions
As the parliamentary election date gets closer, waves of disinformation and discrediting content intensifies both from Russian and domestic sources. It is likely that the coronavirus pandemic has caused early activation of the infrastructure created for exerting information influence on election processes. Consequently, a high level of activity of coordinated Facebook pages, groups and accounts […]
Changes to electoral law need substantial improvements to align with international democratic standards
In ODIHR’s assessment, the Draft Act requires substantial improvements to be aligned with OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections. Implementation of the Draft Act within the timeframe envisaged for holding the election on 10 May 2020 would require adoption of more detailed procedural guidelines, may place an unreasonable burden on the implementing […]
An early balance of emergency measures
In response to COVID-19, the Orbán-government has introduced measures that are neither temporary nor proportional. In this analysis, election expert Zsuzsanna Végh argues that the government is using the pandemic as a distraction to further introduce restrictions on democratic rights and freedoms in Hungary.