Countries experiences in presidential election's transparency

Policy and Research
1

Hi everyone

I’m a member of Transparency4Iran, one of the few groups working on transparency in our country. We have had some good experiences during our last election and now facing with the big one; the most important political event in Iran.

Our presidential election will be held on April and we have chosen the topics below to promote transparency and accountability during this golden time:

  1. Tracking Promises
  2. Proposed Cabinet members
  3. Assets and income disclosure
  4. Presidential official Action Plans
  5. Candidate viewpoints on different issues
  6. Election Funding amounts and sources
  7. Election Spending amounts and sources
  8. Candidate Career

We are looking for any experience on such topics in differnt countries. We look forward to here from you about any resources, empirical experiences and skilled related people to the mentioned topics. If so, please let us know.

@Mor, @rufuspollock , In Iran we are taking our first steps in our approach to transparency, therefore, knowing best practices will help us choose the best steps according to our circumstances.

We would be thankful if you enter your notes and comments in the following sheet: Election transparency best practices - Google Sheets

Thank you
Best Regards

(Sorry if it’s not right place to ask!)

3 Likes
2

Always a good place to ask.

Have you ever looked at the NDI open elections handbook? Introduction | Open Election Data Initiative

Are you looking for something like this? There is also this in the UK- https://democracyclub.org.uk/

1 Like
3

@mor Thank you so much!

I add this websites to our sheet: Election transparency best practices - Google Sheets

We need more information about other countries. Would you please introduce some people or organizations working on such issue?

Something like this wonderful website in Poland: https://mamprawowiedziec.pl/

1 Like
4

The best stakeholder here will be the NDI, do you want an intro to them? also maybe Code for SA can provide some feedback here… @adi

1 Like
5

Elections are not typically our areas of expertise so I can’t share examples of actual accountability or any influence the work such as ours have had an influence on the elections. Having said that here are a few tools that we developed that do relate to politicians and elections which might be of interest:

Monitoring of attendance of parliamentarians at committee meetings: Freddie Adams :: People's Assembly
MP Register of interests (developed by MySociety): Freddie Adams :: People's Assembly
Analysis of gender bias in the elections: Female participation in the Local Government Elections - YouTube

Adi

1 Like
6

Thanks @Mor for the NDI shout out.

@hmalekny Always great to hear that groups are working on transparency and accountability in election processes! I would suggest that you start by taking a look at some of the resources that are already being produced around these issues in Iran.

ASL19 has developed an online tool called the Rouhani Meter to track President Rouhani’s adherence to campaign promises and a tool called the Majlis Monitor to provide more information about the composition of parliament and the qualifications of the representatives.

Nabz Iran has a lot of great resources around electoral participation, including a series of online courses on themes that include elections, accountability and advocacy. One course that may be of particular interest is on Citizen Oversight of Elections: How to Get Involved in Elections Beyond Voting.

In terms of more general resources, the Open Society Foundation has produced a handbook on how civil society can monitor election campaign finance, that may be worth checking out.

Then, as @Mor mentioned, NDI’s Open Election Data Initiative provides examples of the types of data that can be made available throughout all phases of the electoral cycle and a series of nine principles for open electoral data that reflect international best practices as articulated during a series of dialogues with electoral management bodies, international observers and citizen observers from around the world. These principles can be used to structure advocacy efforts for additional open data based on an assessment of the data that it would be most useful to have in your electoral context.

Hope that’s of some help!

1 Like
7

It was really helpful

Actually we have knew NabzIran and ASL19 since we started Transparency4Iran.There are some cons and pros about them but we are the ONLY group working on transparency inside Iran.

Thank you