Yeah, perfect so We're all welcome to everyone that are joining us both here in the room and online for the launch of international ideas New handbook on special voting arrangements And for those of you who don't know us, and I think many of those are online International idea is an intergovernmental organization with 34 Member states around the world and we have the mandate to strengthen democracy worldwide We are a think and a do tank and we have a global comparative research program on this different aspects of democracy building For example, electoral processes, but also democracy assessment political participation and representation gender and inclusion constitution building processes digitalization and democracy and climate change and democracy and We also have five regional programs and 20 country programs across the world where we provide capacity building and technical assistance to democratic reforms mainly in your democracies and Since last year we have an office here in Washington DC here at the open government hub Where we use to conduct outreach here in the US making our work known to US based audiences participating in debates on democracy and collaborating with US based organizations supporting democracy internationally and since 2022 The US is also an observer to international idea Which we are very happy about So today we are launching one of our latest knowledge products on special voting arrangements And this is truly a labor of love that has taken many many years to accomplish Why why handbook? Well international idea produces many different types of knowledge products on democracy building and in the past actually Handbooks was one of our most prominent forms of knowledge products Some of you may know our electoral system design handbook first published in 2005 And it's actually the most downloaded publication that international idea has ever produced But in the last five or so years we have moved away to some extent from handbooks to shorter web-based pieces of analysis Interactive databases policy briefs So this handbook is actually the first one in a number of years now And and for us those handbooks they they mark really a distinct point in time Where we feel that we have enough sort of meat on the bones to make a significant normative contribution to the field And underpinning each of those handbooks that we have produced Including the one that we are presenting today is a really rich evidence base With the offices that we have on all continents and our networks and research and practice We are very very fortunate to have unique access to the state of play on electoral arrangements globally and so before we start off and Mainly for those maybe online if you are wondering what we mean with special voting arrangements because the concept is used In different ways and has other names In different contexts. We are referring to different alternatives to to conventional voting and Peter My colleague is going to talk more about that in a minute These special voting arrangements gained prominence to the general public across the globe during the pandemic and The pandemic really accelerated the adoption of SVA's to ensure Social distancing during elections during the pandemic But special voting arrangements have existed before and continue to be implemented after the pandemic to increase access to voting for different groups And maybe the most well-known form of special voting arrangement is postal voting or voting by mail But the handbook will cover 10 other forms of special voting arrangements that Peter will go over in a minute and These special voting arrangements they they really play a key role in making voting more accessible for those with the right But not the opportunity to vote conventionally They also enhance voting convenience. They foster greater citizen engagement, which is a fundamental objective of all democracies They also serve as a safeguard in terms of crisis whether it's due to sudden events or prolonged emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic And when they are administered with integrity provisions SVA's bolster public confidence in democratic institutions and particularly the electoral process So we produce three types of inputs in our handbooks Including the one that we're introducing today The first one the first input is quantitative data. So it's what what do we know about SVA's? Which as VAs are used where and by whom so that's the quantitative part and that's the first part of the handbook Qualitative data is also an important input to the handbook Via our many many workshops practiced anchor case studies and tight links with practitioners Around the world. We are looking into how special voting arrangements are implemented and what are good practices from different countries And what can we learn from them? Also, we're looking at what can go wrong and what lessons can we draw from those experiences around the world And then the third input is expert deliberation So we use structured deliberation to arrive at normative statements and also recommendations that we have at the end of the handbook and each of these inputs is Available as pieces of the evidence puzzle on our databases workshop reports and policy papers But the handbooks are carefully curated and composed to definitely mark a land Align in the sand So to say these are the categories These are the considerations. These are the steps in when it comes to special voting arrangements and for this reason our handbooks have cumulatively shaped the field of electoral management and We see them as part of the public international law To which electoral processes can be held accountable For example by election observers and so in short the handbooks have standing and a robustness That transcends those quicker reports that I talked about before And they also form the basis for subsequent training courses and policy recommendations So this handbook in particular serves as a versatile toolkit for understanding selecting and implementing special voting arrangements and The handbook is geared towards assisting electoral management bodies around the world Legislatures civil society organizations Political parties and anyone who is interested in the development contact and experience of special voting arrangements So why why your handbook on special voting arrangements? So we had not originally envisaged this this topic, but then the the COVID-19 pandemic happened Those trends were already underway To extend the way voting was done But the pandemic really turbocharged those those developments And as you will hear from Peter Navigating the normative dimensions of SVA's for the handbook was not easy In the end we took the stance that election day polling station voting is a gold standard Because it's a controlled environment with established practices and safeguards to secure secrecy out of the ballot accountability accuracy and Transparency, but with that as a baseline the book then systematically reviews how we best balance the benefits of special voting arrangements in terms of inclusion and franchise with the risks of a more uncontrolled environment and The risk that these mechanisms may be used and misused by those wanting to undermine the election result So it is these questions that will guide the panel discussion today as well So we have with us here a wonderful panel and we have the lead author of the report Peter Wolf my colleague here at the end of the table He's gonna share the main findings of the report and he will be accompanied by this Fantastic panel of experts that are gonna share their insights from implementing special voting arrangements throughout the world including here in the US So we have with us Amber McReynolds next to Peter a US electoral expert with particular expertise in postal voting Wonderful experience and Across many states in the US. We also have Staffan Darnolf here to my left Global elections advisor at IFAS and David Levine in between them here sent senior elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund I'm also very pleased to to see here in the room and online as well We have a number of people watching us colleagues and friends working both domestically and internationally With these issues and there will be an opportunity for interrupt interactive discussion and questions after the panel and Our hopes with this session and moving forward is to widen and deepen this conversation about the future of our voting practices our North America office of international idea that I had links global and US conversations Making this topic of special voting arrangements, particularly appropriate And and as the US and countries around the world globally Progressively adopt and employ a range of alternatives to conventional voting We note that the US is leading both in discourse and innovation and both are being watched with great interest by this global audience So without further ado, let us now turn to Peter The chief author of the handbook and my colleague at international idea in the electoral processes team to give you an overview of the key finding of the report over to you Peter Thank you so much, Annika Thanks also for everybody in the room who found the time to come here for the launch of this handbook It took us a while to to bring it out, but finally we managed to publish it So I'm really happy about this. Thanks also to everybody of course who's joining us online Now The reason why we have started working on this handbook was indeed finally COVID But initially there was also other projects and other fields of work in in our elections team that always Brought up the the question of special voting arrangements as well. This started with I'm not sure. Actually, can we put the presentation up on screen? This started with the work on out-of-country voting voting from abroad where we have Launched a handbook already some 15 years ago. This was very much in a context of post-conflict elections transitional elections where we just saw how important special voting arrangements are for especially including Refugees, maybe also including displaced persons in the first and then subsequent post-conflict elections And so seeing what's happening for example in Ukraine We can imagine that special voting arrangements are also going to be important in the post-conflict elections there But then there is also our work on voter turnout Where we of course unfortunately see in many countries around the world a decline in voter turnout and oftentimes the questions ask What can be done about it? Sometimes there's also an expectation that special voting arrangements can be a solution here Then migration prior to the pandemic was one of the big topics as well people more voluntarily than migrating either Nationally or internationally Oftentimes for work reason oftentimes maybe also not properly registered in the places where they're staying and there are also the questions How can they participate in elections when they are technically still registered in their home home districts where they're coming from? But then as Anika said before the final decision to to work on this topic in form of a handbook was the COVID-19 pandemic Where we all of a sudden saw how important special voting arrangements can be in moments of crisis and emergency Especially if you have to replace already what we saw in the pandemic in many countries that tried to introduce them last minute Lithuania for example was trying to introduce online voting very last minute. This is very difficult It just takes time to get those arrangements in place But those countries that had them already were quite an advantage in just being able to expand those arrangements And so it's really an important toolkit or SVS have proven to be an important toolkits four times of of crisis and emergency Now obviously for democracy I don't have to mention the reason why special voting arrangements is important It's just about infranchising every citizen making sure that the right to vote is not only something that's in trying to loss in theory But that also happens in practice for everybody also for those people who can't necessarily attend a polling station on election day Now Definitions are really difficult in this topic. There are so many naming conventions out there. There is special voting arrangements There's voting methods. There's voting streams There is voting channels and some of the co-panelists can also attest to the confusion this can sometimes create But even when you look at that election laws Of course, they normally method in polling stations without even defining what exactly that is and then just spell out What kind of alternatives exist also with very different terminologies or country by country things will be cost be called postal voting May voting by mail There is a country Montenegro that has voting by letter which actually is mobile voting So there is a whole lot of terminology confusion out there But eventually for this publication, which has thought well, maybe let's do something similar to what election law still Let's start with conventional voting as the starting point Conventional voting being where voting is directly by the voter where voting happens in a polling station But voting happens on election day and also where there is no validation step between the moment when a voter Drops the ballot into the ballot box and when the vote count begins and This is indeed the gold standard still for for elections and voting We've discussed this quite a bit in several events that we also used to to prepare this publication And there was widespread agreement that Conventional voting is the gold standard meaning all the other alternative voting arrangements have to be measured in terms of integrity and transparency against that gold standard Now as we are then simply the definition of the opposite So basically it's alternative to the gold standard where voting either happens not directly or not independently by the voter Not in a polling station not an election day away from the home district from the home community of the voter Or where there's some sort of a validation step before the vote count When it comes to types and typologies, we came up with this list of about 10 11 key types But I'll mention later on in practice. Sometimes it's not that easy to to call them like this There's a lot of gray areas a lot of combinations of them But basically we settled on saying well the first six are probably the ones that you are very familiar with anyway So there's early voting before election day postal voting Mobile ballot box where you have mobile teams visiting voters Wherever they may be on the election day and letting them cast their vote with that team online voting internet voting But then also voting arrangements where there is an intermediary between the voter and the vote casting So that's proxy voting and assisted voting Then there is a range of Options where you have special polling stations that are being set up So this could be either for a particular group in an institution maybe in a hospital in military barracks In a home for elderly people or just special polling stations that are being set up away from home precinct So there are countries that have polling stations placed around the country where any voter no matter where their home constituencies can go and cast their votes And then obviously you have the same for voting from abroad as well Public stations that are set up. They are usually in diplomatic representations embassies consulate sometimes also in properties beyond that a bit of a special thing here are the Provisional and tender ballots So those are arrangements that are often in place when there's a bit of Unclarity about the voter list when it's not exactly clear who is entitled to to cast a vote in a certain polling stations So this is a mechanism where you capture basically those the personal details of people where it's uncertain if they are eligible or not and And the ballot is then later or the the eligibility of those voters is then later on we identified after election They may be in a central counting location and depending on whether the voter was eligible or not the vote will be counted or not Oftentimes with the votes are not even knowing what happened to the ballot Sometimes voters also have a chance to find out if the ballot was accepted And then the final one is a bit of a borderline case multiple election days a long-standing practice in in India But also during the pandemic several countries started experimenting with this as a way to try to minimize crowding on election day Now obviously special voting arrangements are then always about trade off So it's trading off integrity risks on one hand that might increase to some extent at least if no proper countermeasures are being undertaken and Participation dividends on the other hand, so they hope for SvAs is obviously always you want to increase the includes inclusiveness of the elections access equality Sometimes also just a convenience of of voters and hopefully increase the turnout But on the other hand you just have to deal with the fact that some of those arrangements happen in an uncontrolled environment So it's not exactly Controllable by the election administration how the votes are cast for example if the voters protect their secrecy properly There can be limitations to the transparency to the observability of a process because they might be a lot more dispersed and observers might not have direct access Security chain of custody with some of them can be more difficult secrecy the possibility of family voting especially out of controlled environments can be an issue as well and Obviously the big question is also if you especially if you go into early voting a lot of people might cast their votes already as the campaign is still ongoing Maybe they might want to change their mind until election day and they can't if they have cast an early vote So that's why it is just important to start SvAs always with consensus building and see where the trade-off is acceptable in a given country Now what we're trying to do with the handbook is to basically look at Special voting arrangements from three aspects the one is just I'm going to those types into Typologists that I mentioned before in more detail the next one is then also who are the users who are the beneficiaries of those? What kind of what what groups of voters are those? And the final one is then Discussing standards that apply to special voting arrangements implementation details from from different countries. What kind of options are out there? What integrity measures for example are possible? When it comes to the beneficiaries the list here is not exact In terms of priorities or maybe in historic developments, but sometimes this is a bit of a sequence how different groups have Subsequentally received access to special voting arrangements. So oftentimes this starts with people on official duty This could be diplomats abroad maybe military personnel Maybe also security personnel on election day and especially of course also poll workers on Eday But then important group also people who just cannot maybe for disability or access reasons go to a Polling station on election day people who are institutionalized Hospitalized homebound as an important target group as well and there's the whole discussion about incarcerated citizens What kind of voting rights should they have do they have but then also if they have voting rights? How can you extend the vote and? Penitentiary facilities refugee IDP voting I mentioned before ready Citizens abroad Which categories you know what are the conditions under which they can vote? Then migrant workers in country and out of country But then you have also more and more people that might just be Temporarily away on election day on vacation or just for other reasons and then the question would also be how can they vote if they can't reach the polling station and then the final category here is Convenience voting so this is really for people who could come to a polling station, but you just offer still an alternative to them In some countries there's a strong impression already that people just demand more and more services from government also from the election Administration and that there is also demand for more convenience, which means either online voting or postal voting in many cases Now what we try to capture in the handbook is then different practices also examples of practices from countries because there's Big big variations between different countries when it comes even to the implementation of the same thing postal voting Oftentimes again, there's hybrids between one system or another. There's different kinds of eligibility criteria different kinds of integrity checks different kinds of accountability security processes and also different Kind of transparency that's being established in terms of access for observers access for political parties Also in terms of data that's being published about the process in some countries You can get a lot of details about how the system works and how many cars boats were cast with SVA's in some some countries you can't Now as one practical example how this is playing out I just choose the one from my home country actually from Austria where what would be made in other places called Postal voting is called a voting card But it's some sort of a postal voting plus system I would say so it has all the features of what normal posting what the postal voting has So you probably know usually you have this double envelope system and in a security envelope that contains the ballot an Outer envelope that contains all the personal details and the votes are being count first eligibility is checked with the auto envelope The vote is eligible that envelope is removed and the secret vote inside is then Moved into a separate counting process. So this is basically how the system works as well An interesting feature here and maybe this is where I have a question for as well is The the envelope is supposed to be free of charge when it comes to mailing So it's got prepaid postage globally so you can drop it in any mailbox worldwide and the post office is Transporting it free of charge back to the election administration One issue though that has turned out with this I hear from our election administration is that this sign is not always Recognized and the fear that bells actually do get lost because that prepaid postage sign is not recognized And I hear especially in the US sometimes some post offices might not be aware that this is supposed to be transported But then what's an interesting aspect here is that this is not only used for postal voting So this is one of those hybrid systems where I can also decide well I want to use that system, but I don't want to send the ballot by mail So you can bring those ballots to the embassy for example, and they will forward it for you with their diplomatic pouches Military units abroad can also use this to cast a vote within the military unit And this will then go to the military communication channels And then also any citizen in country can use that package to cast their vote from any polling station in the country If it's in the same district where you're from so if you have the same ballot like that polling station They will just check on the auto envelope for your eligibility add you to the voter list and Your vote will just be counted with with the remaining Ballots from this polling station if you're out of your district They will do the same thing check eligibility and then make sure that the inner envelope is forwarded to the right Accounting center for for your district. So in a way quite a smart combination of a few Systems in in one process same registration, but then different applications But also not free of problems and there was quite a big problem that happened back in 2016 The voting heart is a stuff 2016. This was a presidential election that just because of the postal voting process actually had to be repeated twice the first one was when a Practice became known that was only known to insiders before This counting and validation process of the ballots turned out to be a very tedious process for everybody at polling station committees the party observers Opening the ballots took a lot of time. So what some municipalities have decided as well We'll ask a secretary just to open all of those ballots before we start the validation and counting So that was kind of appreciated because things went faster But it was not according to the legal procedure, of course This is sensitive material Opening this would open the avenue for all kinds of manipulation if somebody wasn't inclined to do so But it was tolerated, but only until we had a close presidential election race Then the result was tight One of the parties the losing party knew as everybody else this is happening They went to the court and the constitutional court said you are not the entire election for the entire country Because of those few local communities. So a rerun had to be scheduled and then another small glitch happened What the election administration really tried is to make those envelopes better to make the security features better Protect the privacy better So they had this new flap on the ballot that protected a lot of the personal details that you have to write on the outside Turned out the printing company that did this job for the first time didn't do a good job and a few small Percentage of those envelopes was falling apart already as the sent out. So yeah, they just said, okay We have to stop this here Repeat the election two weeks later. So basically two issues with the voting card in in two elections But of course, it's also a demonstration that those systems are just evolving Um, you have to learn what works what doesn't work. You have to step up Integrity measures as you learn about this and also a big experience this Issue with the envelopes falling apart. They really tried to refine the process actually from step to step They realized what actually we need to protect personal details better So we tried to redo the envelope that also learned the previous process was very complicated led to quite a lot of Invalid ballots because the instructions weren't simple enough. So gradually they just clarified the instructions They made the process easier for voters They did away even with a two signature procedure in the past you needed to witnesses that confirmed you voted in secret That was an obstacle for many people. So so they did away with this But all of those things had just to come very careful get agreement that this can be done So an ongoing process and I think this is what you see in a lot of countries that successfully Modify their arrangements. I think in the okay They also did a really good job in just looking exactly why do we get invalid postal ballots back and then just fine tune this again Make it easier for people One problem though that I think remains in pretty much all postal voting processes It's usually the voter needs to sign and unfortunately too many people just forget for some reason to put that one Signage on and it's always painful when you're there on the ground seeing those ballots coming in and every the voters did everything They registered devoted and then there is no signature So so that's an ongoing issue. I think this is something where at least I find Quite interesting also to look at some of the options that US has developed and that are not so widespread outside So this option of curing the ballots being able to correct formal mistakes Making sure that whatever is done to make sure that the vote is not lost I think that's a really good practice and what I also find very surprising is that the ballot tracking that works in so many jurisdictions in The US where you have whatever a number and you can find out okay My postal ballot arrived at the election administration. It went into a into the count is on that's not available in many other countries Which I think is a very important Transparency in integrity measure and it's just surprising how few countries outside the US have this in place Now one aspect when it comes to integrity is certainly also the question of the cost of all of this And it's notoriously difficult to establish the cost of election I'm sure stuff and also has a lot of experience about this very difficult to make costs comparable between countries But also within a given country to compare the different voting arrangements of what they cost but this is an example from Taltek University in Estonia and they found a very interesting methodology where they can go to a specific country and really establish the cost of every voting channel as they say And so they did this for Estonia and the bottom line is here when you use normal conventional election day voting as a starting point There's only one arrangement. That's cheaper than that and that's internet voting in their case more than 50% They're already vote online and so they see some 25% savings per voter Compared to to conventional voting, but then everything else they have county centers for example So those polling stations that are open to everybody no matter where you live twice the price approximately already advanced voting mobile voting two three four times more expensive and then it really goes up quite steeply to Voting in diplomatic missions where they then have six seven times the cost and postal voting in Estonia is a very expensive thing 25 30 times more expensive I think though this has to do with the fact that they have very few postal voters. It seems a very high number Otherwise, I'm not sure if this would be the same in in other countries What the handbook also contains is some snapshots from a global database So an online version of this database is available with this QR code and that's more updated than of course what we can do in the handbook But this database contains the four most common voting arrangements early voting mobile ballot boxes Postal voting and proxy voting and how it's used pretty much in all countries around the world and an interesting figure and Stefan was picking up on this immediately on this slide here is most common is early voting second is then mobile ballot boxes, but then I found quite interesting that postal voting and proxy voting are almost the same 16 percent 17 percent And and the answer why that is is actually quite surprising and I think it's in the fact that this is a long-standing tradition in France During the pandemic there was even discussions in France what to do what kind of other arrangements could be offered Could it be postal voting? But then there was a lot of skepticism against postal voting but proxy voting just because I guess it has such a Longstanding history was the option that that was accepted even though there's a lot of people that are warning And a lot of experts that are warning about postal voting especially in weak Democratic context because there's just such an entry point for family voting and so on of course But it's a trusted mechanism in France and not only in France But also in a lot of countries of the francophonie that apparently have the same history the same kind of track record that they are Trusting these voting arrangements. So this is why you see that in Africa for example 25 percent Of countries are offering proxy voting which which is quite unusual compared to the rest of the world This chart tries to compare a little bit Global north versus global south so OECD membership is here but the the criteria that has been used for for Selected the countries in both groups. So when you look at the whole world 68% of countries have at least one of those four voting arrangements in place But in the OECD, this is much more common So you have almost 90 percent 89 percent of OECD countries have special voting arrangements Versus only 63 percent in non OECD countries Here you also see that interestingly in the OECD then the Ratio between the arrangements is changing quite a bit So here often you have postal voting being the most common so more than half 51 percent of OECD countries have postal voting in place And then mobile voting and early voting also around 50 percent not far behind and here then proxy voting All of a sudden becomes more the exception than normal This final chart here then shows The gaps in special voting arrangements So those are the countries that have none of those four arrangements in place And so the biggest gap seems to be the Americas here 52% in the Americas have none of those arrangements in place and that Apparently so when at least you ask and totally people from from those countries and from the region It seems to be mostly a trust issue that the trust in voting outside polling station is still relatively low But obviously also a possible area of growth and at least discussing if this is wouldn't be worth introducing at that some point And then Africa of course as well 44% of the countries on the African continent have no as we is in place at the moment Coming already to some of the conclusions. So again the gold standard we mentioned a few times already it Conventional voting remains the gold standard But our interlocutors in discussions already started questioning this as well and saying well We now see more and more countries where the majority of votes is no longer Cast in polling stations with the land 90% online Postal voting Estonia more than a half online I'm here in the US a few states that have completely switched to postal So the trend seems to be a bit going at least in terms of numbers that we see more and more SVA is coming And does that maybe also mean that this balance between what I called before integrity and participation Maybe the historic development is just not defined on equilibrium that we're finding maybe the gold standard will also have to be re-evaluated at some point Also special voting arrangements are certainly special. They are different from conventional voting But there's certainly not the exception so you find them pretty much in all countries around the world So nothing extraordinary anymore We've also seen that as we certainly make except elections more accessible But with turnout one has to be a bit careful what kind of impact to expect So I would say the quality of turnout certainly improves I mean SVA is a primary primarily there to make it possible for people to vote that otherwise wouldn't have an opportunity And of course that might not be huge numbers So you see a massive jump in 10% of the turnout, but of course the quality of participation increases by keeping those in Just making voting more convenient I think the stories are a bit more mixed there and and oftentimes is here where voting is just introduced for or special voting arrangements I just introduced for convenience reasons that people that voted in polling stations before will then said well if I can vote online I will vote online and you see then regular voters Switching to the alternative arrangements may be more than people who just were not interested in voting before all of a sudden getting interested Because those arrangements are in place We discussed already a lot that SVA's are a very factor for electoral resilience If you have to replace in times of emergencies and crisis, there's certainly a big advantage and no one-size-fits-all So Country implementations are really very very different corresponding to the needs to the consensus that was found in every country as Everything and this is already coming close to the end now with with some of the recommendations Everything as with everything in election operations Everything has to do with with trust in the end so special voting arrangements are certainly also a test in the Trust and the strength a stress test in the existing trust in the electoral processes They can weaken trust where it's already weak But they can also demonstrate the trust where it's relatively strong and this image here I find it sometimes quite useful to discuss trust in electoral processes trust in electoral institutions Based on some research that has been done with with with other risk institutions What actually makes people trust an institution? What makes stakeholders trust an institution and very simplified is often boils down to those four pillars Of this building here the first being the trust of delivery. So really making sure that The election administration can deliver a flawless election can deliver flawless special voting arrangements And I think this is also where for example funding is coming in again You can't do this on a small budget and you can't do this if you don't have the budget on a permanent basis To just make sure those processes are working But then it's also about engagement so the trust of engagement builds a lot on having a community around the electoral process Communicating not only with the voters and letting them know how those systems are working But also communicating with the different electoral stakeholders telling them how systems are working making sure that no Misconceptions are just creating rumors that are spreading which is sometimes also happening It's sometimes not only this information, but literally uninformed stakeholders that just form their own theory of how exactly those arrangements are working So communication engagement a very important pillar the next one is then Trust of familiarity and this is a bit harder to get so People trust what they know people trust what they predict As soon as you change a lot people will start wondering what does that mean for me start mistrusting it And that's why it's also really hard to introduce changes in the electoral process at short notice So starting something gradual taking time doesn't only help the election administration to get used to the systems to Modify them to adjust them as they are growing But it also helps stakeholders to become familiar with the process and then finally of course trust has to do a lot with the integrity the perception of the institution itself as well if you start off with poor perceptions poor integrity SVS can probably just Exaggerate that and the same thing is to on the other side as well If you're lucky enough to start with a high level of integrity that might also make it easier to implement With this I'm almost coming to the end of the presentation There's certainly a lot more aspects to cover for example also how special voting arrangements Impact the rhythm of elections the traditional pattern and traditions that you see an unelection day But I think this is too far and more than I can get into the barcode or the QR code here Is the link to the publication so please do download it and check out those details them for yourself. Thank you so much Do we use it or not use it? But how do we learn from each of these? Processes and keep on improving it But I think it also requires a certain trust capital to be able to do that especially in the case where you were saying it It was tried twice You you had some trust capital in Austria to draw from but in places where that trust capital is low And you may not have a lot to draw on and I think the other issue that we we're all aware of is you know how how challenging this becomes in a contest of context of closely contested elections and That we're seeing not just here in the US but also in other countries so a lot of very interesting things We try to be climate-friendly at idea So we haven't printed this report, but I hope you all have the QR code and that you will look at the report and Read it online We we're going to move over now to the to the panel discussion and we are so lucky to have with us International experts US experts that are going to share their experiences on some of the issues that we talked about Here to my left. I have staff on Darnoff You work as a senior lecture elections advisor at IFAS You have an impressive resume of more than 30 years of experience in Fort over 40 countries around the world as a scholar and practitioner of electoral processes And you have specialized in electoral reform in emerging democracies and post-conflict societies So it's going to be very interesting to hear Your international experience Through IFAS and David Levine very happy to have you here with us as well You work as a senior elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for securing democracy at the German Marshall Fund here in DC as well Where you assess vulnerabilities in electoral infrastructure administration and policies in different parts of the world And you are also an advisory committee member of the global cyber Alliance cyber security toolkit for elections and On on the advisor council of the election reformers network You also have US experience, which I think is really interesting. So you combine both the international and the US experience you We're working prior to joining the Alliance as the Idaho elections director in Ada County. So It's going to be very Interesting to hear your experience and Amber McReynolds Finally, we are so honored to have you here and that you were in DC these days and we could count on your in-person Presence you are one of the leading experts on election administration here in the US and In 2021 you were appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as a government for the United States Postal Service And you have dedicated your career to improving the voting process for all first as an election official Serving as the director of elections for the city and County of Denver in Colorado And then as a thought leader and founding a CEO for the national vote at home Institute and coalition And now you are collaborating also and supporting various organizations across the US For example issue one fair vote election reformers network as well And you have also co-authored a book on when the women vote so In addition to the insights from Peter, we're going to hear from from all of you some of your experiences and And let's start with stuff on and I think We'll hear your perspective and maybe some of the other panelists have something to say on this, but Peter talked about the trade-offs between the controlled environment of election day polling station voting and the uncontrolled environment of special voting arrangements And but but also the benefits of special voting arrangements in terms of inclusion and convenience But that also presents some some risks For example the secrecy of the ballot and and Peter went over some of those How how do we balance these trade-offs? And what would be your your view and recommendations on how to best balance that in different contexts? That's an impossible question No, but first thank you all for the invitation and congratulation to idea in general and Here in particular for this handbook I'm a huge fan of handbooks I'm glad that even the the new nice logo with idea you still stick to the handbooks You know because it's certainly a needed out there for people like you like myself and because a lot of work We do with election authorities. They want to look not at their case Those want to say okay, but where has this been done elsewhere, you know So that comparative perspective and be able to say well, you know There are four or five maybe ten other countries have done it and they tweaked it to work for them So I think that's where I'm landing is like There's no such thing as a as a you know carbon copy here You know, you need to design it according to the challenges at hand in in that country and and Yes, I agree that the the goal there is a gold standard when it comes to election day and conventional voting But it's only gold standard if you follow the principles So there's no guarantee just because you have you know in-person voting on election have it done properly as you meet the principles Having said that when it comes to the SVA's Yes, they still have a bit of cash up to do in a lot of places You know, but it was down to a bit like like Australia. You know, do you have the trust? You're still wonder if the the the Austrian chief election commissioner survived two hits You know maybe the institution retain this trust, but I'm not sure if that chief restrained the trust we're gonna have to talk about that later, but I Think I think it's essential When you're introducing or considering to introduce an SVA that you need to do some sort of an integrity risk assessment You know, you need to know how far below are we? when it comes to the the the risk and the type of risk mitigations we can Recently apply to introduce something like this I think that's one of the the must if you if you just randomly say well, we have the political will We have the funding the and B has the technical capacity to go ahead with it Let's roll the diocese and go with it No, you need to do a little more homework before you make such an important decision So that having sort of a proper Integrative risk assessment with the mitigation plan that goes with it You have to do it and then equally important that it's not something that's just done by Special committee within Parliament or the election authorities essential that you also bring on board the stakeholders and that goes beyond the parties So you have to have the civil society in some societies you need to have the Traditional and religious leaders to be party of this, you know, otherwise there might be some suspicions about us I think that's an important and then of course you need to look at what are the costs for this How much what's the cost benefit of adding this this new SVA it might be Compared to speaking very expensive But maybe there's a political prerogative why we need to have this special Previously disadvantaged group being on board. So again, you have the discussions the acceptance and then you can move ahead with with with these things and Finally as as an election administrator something That we sometimes forget we focusing on the election authorities ability to deliver on the new SVA But not looking so much. Okay, if we give them this additional task to do another What looks a fairly easy extension of the SVA? Maybe that's the straw that's breaking the cabinet backs when it comes to deliver the general Traditional vote and I've seen that happen in some places Because the chairman of the election commission doesn't want to say no to the politician or they introducing some new fancy Technology and he or she want to be perceived as the reform minded individual So he or she says yes, we can do it and then things fall apart when it comes to the traditional part of election Because everyone is focused on delivering this new and shiny object. I stopped there. Thank you Thank you so much Stefan very good insights I don't know if anyone else on the panel would like to to touch on this question. Otherwise, I'll move on to To some other questions that I had Amber do you? So I think Well a couple things I Think on the SVA's and I'll particularly talk about postal voting for a second The United States is leading On a lot of this and I actually credit a lot of the reason for that To the fact that the postal service in the United States and another Gallup poll actually just confirmed this is the most trusted agency in government by far and and year after year that is Found to be true. It is the oldest institution. We have it's a year older than our Country and it's founding it has the oldest law enforcement agency and it serves every single community every single day and connects commerce and business and Election offices to voters and it's the only institution that serves every voter and every election office and And and the fact of the matter is it's also a it's a public institution Required under the Constitution to provide universal service and when I look at International the international context a lot of the postal services are actually privatized around the world which introduces a whole set of risks Around that and there are not legal parameters and requirements as we have in our laws for how that service delivers mail and delivering the mail is a is a key part of of Postal voting being successful And and one other thing I you know the the term conventional is fascinating to me, so You know in a lot of parts of the United States now Conventional is Postal vote mail voting and so there's sort of this switch We're gonna have to think about how we how we change this verbiage over time But I think the other thing I just want to quickly say about conventional voting As we think about SVA is is we also have to be honest about the risks of conventional voting And I think they often get overlooked and there are significant security risks with only having something on one day Assigning a group of people to a location and that being publicly available for bad actors to Target that location and so in a lot and I think COVID actually exposed one of the biggest risks and that's and that's the In a natural disaster or a health emergency when you are groups to actually do the SVA is is not only to provide a More inclusive experience and there's a few groups that you know are beneficiaries that weren't listed including parents With small children people who work students those sorts of things But one of the other reasons to look at SVA is which I think is a really important aspect of the conversation Is to actually consider how they mitigate risks of conventional voting because they actually mitigate a number of them and and and and finally on the the pillar Engagement was one more that I just wanted to mention The US has a different experience than the most parts of the world in that There is evidence of increased engagement and turnout the states that offer it are all at the top 10 lists for Engagement and turnout and the states that don't have it are all in the bottom 10 consistently And so when you've got a variance of 80% turnout in one state in a presidential election and 50% in another It's a big variance and the only way to explain it is the policies on the books that make a difference I don't think I have too much more to add but but I think I would build on Amber's point And that is about this electoral resilience point which was in the report I mean one of the things that was interesting is that this was sort of This report which is fabulous, and I encourage everyone to read it really focuses on the trade-off You know and thinking about it within the access perspective But as a former election official and I know Amber could speak to this there are two other I think really important pieces that interestingly the examples in the paper get at but I thought This report could have even hit on more directly number one What it means for electoral? Administrators right and what that could mean to sort of supplement what amber's talking about right is Rather than getting all of the calls on one day right when you have other voting arrangements You have the ability to have that be spread out, right? I know you're sort of familiar with this, but I think you know having talked with election officials right in countries across the world Right, this is not necessarily sort of unique to the United States The other piece that I think is is sort of goes hand in hand with this is the election security piece of this And and just to sort of fight put a finer point on that right, you know I hate I mean I we could talk about other examples aside from the US But we're in the US and I feel like I can go for to make the example right Chris Krebs had a press conference Right during the 2020 election and he was asked about early voting and he made two points about why he thought it was beneficial One was that he talked about the fact that it could frankly help increase trust people were participating other people could follow The other thing that he talked about was election security and he talked about he then walked through the example and unfortunately David Cunning Just this I know recently just went out But talked about the the the ability to detect a potential foreign influence attack the ability to push that information down share it with election officials and What that might have looked like if instead of it being done during early voting it had been done on the one opportunity for it to occur on election day and so You know, I you know, I think for for me it was interesting because I actually think those two points are covered in the report I just think they're more diffuse right and and I think the electoral resilience point is a really really important one because In your example talks about this Italy goes to multiple days All right, Netherlands looks at opportunities to get voters who are over 70 be able to participate All right being able to do that and we see a whole bunch of other countries Right South Korea early on the pandemic their ability to pull off that national election is about right offering some additional opportunities and so You know, again, I do think it's important about context specific I think it's helpful right you have to keep in mind whether or not you have Right that particular not mode, you know If you're to your point if you're to sort of do vote by mail totally from scratch in a very short time window I think that's a challenge But I think one of the great things about the report that I think is worth pushing out there, right is the is the Resilience that can be built in from from a number of those special voting assistance opportunities Great. Thank you so much David for for those valuable insights and and thanks amber for giving us some Good suggestions on additional target groups parents with small children Definitely me a couple of years ago. My children are older now, but and I have benefited personally from these special voting arrangements That my country gives them Swedish Last elections I voted here at the embassy so out of country voting and then the elections prior to that my kids were small I had to take them to school. I voted by mail and Benefited from that but also your your viewpoint on You know, what are we calling conventional voting and what has what is conventional voting? What will become conventional voting? I think things are changing so rapidly Maybe in a few years we'll sit here and you know use different terms and call some of these SVA's conventional voting rather than voting in the polling station and I Think let's move. I wanted to pick up on some of the things that we've discussed and David follow up with you on a question Peter talked about it You know, what are the enabling factors for SVA's to work in different contexts and What factors are important for the the acceptance of special voting arrangements for example postal voting early voting by politicians by Electro management bodies and also by voters. Well, what are your thoughts on that? It's a really good question Understand correctly, you know, I think there are a number of things to sort of consider About sort of special voting arrangements I mean, I think it's really important that you know It's really important that you have the resources and you have the time to be able to do this right again If we turn to the United States just for a moment, right? The ability for a number of jurisdictions to carry out to scale up Special voting assistance arrangements in their primaries was more choppy than it was during the general election in 2020 And that was due to a multitude of factors, but certainly one of them was time and experience And and you know, I think one of the things is certainly about being able to have a modality that you've got some experience with as you And time to be able right to be able to bring that along I think there's obviously this question of cost, which is really important You know, whether or not you're getting it through public funding or you know We've obviously folks in the US as well as in our identity have written about sort of private funding But having the money so that you can be able right to retrofit Or be able to get the technologies you need if you're going to carry out a special voting arrangement is really important You know, I think you know another piece of this that's really important as well is is the ability you know to to be able to Steer the conversation and steered in an evidence-based manner, you know, unfortunately You know, the United States is one example, but there are other countries where we've seen Rhetoric that hasn't been fact-based around vote by mail voting. We've seen that in you know, we've seen that in the US We've seen that in Spain. We've seen that in France We've seen that in a whole host of countries right across the sort of the transatlantic space Which of course is where GMF the German Marshall Fund really focuses its efforts You know, you can have the all the best You know designs and and all the safeguards But if you are encountering severe headwinds that makes life right much more difficult You know and I think the other thing is is that which is really important It touches on this is you know, what ends up being your plan be right in the event that things don't go exactly According to plan One of the reasons I think that the special voting arrangements, you know can be helpful Right is that they provide more opportunities in many cases to have right a plan B If a voter votes early or tries to go vote early and isn't able to do so, right? There's another opportunity for them to be able to do it And you know what's even interesting is even in those instances where countries are perhaps a bit strict about a special voting But there's always interesting little twinkles right France is an interesting example France as you pointed out It was talks about you know has this concern that goes back at least the 1970s around right voter fraud and vote by mail Interestingly France in a very sort of quiet manner did allow recently for vote by mail for those who were incarcerated Which others can draw their own conclusions about but it speaks to What can we do right to try and make sure that this can work for folks so political will Money right the acts of bad faith actors The ability to be able to right Plan out these processes test drive them and then hopefully be aware of where the pitfalls lie So that if there are any issues you can mitigate them obviously there are a number of other things to consider But that's a hopefully a decent start. Thank you. That's it. That's a good start political will money the role of disinformation And the importance of voter education I think is is very important one The learning process and amber you also raised the enabling One of the enabling factors for postal voting, which is a functioning and trustworthy Postal system and I think really interesting to get this perspective on you know public versus private services I don't know if there is anyone else on the panel that want to touch on enabling factors stuff on Maybe not so much enabling fact about sort of the from the EMB perspective and when I talked to chairperson commissioners around the world not just from the from the Geographical south but also the north that the default tend to be we don't get involved in this. It's in the law They will stipulate what kind of the SVA is we supposed to be implementing. I can see that's where you want to Sometimes utilize that sort of safe harbor, but I think it's can also be dangerous because The parliamentarians and then they say so is the mic coming up with what they think is a beautiful Product and in the eyes so an administrator is going to do it.  You just produced you know because it's Gonna be messy to do something that an example Yes, Zimbabwe might not be known for having election great election authorities But they took this stand, you know, whatever comes in the law. We don't deal with the reforms We just can implement it and I think was a bit of a hubris as well because logistically. They're very strong But what they ended up with was that okay? We're gonna do voting early voting for the military So it's gonna be in person. It's gonna be absentee Especially one day, but since there was only like 30,000 Security personnel, they're gonna be doing it over, you know, X number of polling stations Maybe two thousand for both stations. It's not gonna be an issue three elections. Okay, only presidential poll super easy You show up you get the presidential ballot Okay, those can be parliamentary election. Okay 280 different ballots. Okay, the guy shows up. Okay, I got my presidential ballot. Okay, now there are 280 ballots I need to find this and give it to this individual because there was no everything was absentee You didn't have to tell you's gonna be there will also turn out to be local elections. So suddenly it was one ballot You need to find the parliamentary amongst it 280 and then you need to find the local council elections amongst 2,000 ballots suddenly not enough space even to have these ballot papers And if you do the math, it's like you know hundreds of thousands of different combinations where one person show up So they manage to completely crash this system on day one of trying to implement it because they were not involved They I mean a day after election authority had that seen it and they had less uberis and actually see what the law says They would have hopefully raised the hand and say, sorry, this is not feasible We need to have some amendments to this law before we move forward. So Acceptance for me and be sometimes I can see why they they sort of hiding behind the law saying whatever the politician gives us We're gonna implement, but I think you have to have a bit more responsibility ownership of whatever Svm you're gonna end up with No, very very good to bring up the political dimension versus the the expert Dimension which is important in this context and I think the other Dimension that you touched upon indirectly is also that special voting arrangements can be implemented in Democratic context and in less democratic context. I don't know if Peter there is something that Is is there something coming out of your data? Do you see any patterns there? Is it more common in democracies than in on democracies or or anything? You know ranging from hybrid regimes to authoritarian regimes and some thoughts or recommendations there I think you'll have it as well You've got more broadly first, but certainly, yeah, I would just say it's certainly Risky to make this a mark of democracy somehow. So having those arrangements or not doesn't mean you're a better or worse democracy We had especially intensive conversations with Civil society in Russia. I think no one doesn't have to anonymize at least this country That was tracking a lot with with some of the arrangements that have been implemented there Also this kind of mobile box the collection of of ballots and and a complete lack of transparency teams going out Collecting ballots from summer or nobody can really know where are those teams going? Why are they coming back with the full box? Who is exactly voting? So certainly if it's done with the wrong intentions with you know a lack of all of the integrity measures We have been mentioning before this can certainly also be used to the democracy and electoral credibility Yeah, no, no, no, I think that's I think that broader point is right And you know part of the work that we do the Alliance for sharing democracy is is is to be mindful about how even Ideas that are good ones or theoretically good ones can be weaponized by my malicious actors And so, you know your paper touches on this right Poland ran a 2020 election You know and they decided initially with very short notice and very little stakeholder engagement, right that they were gonna run An all-male election now, you know From an election administration perspective, there are all kinds of challenges with being able to pull that off But one can easily zoom out Look at the law and justice party and see what they have done since 2015 up until you know Obviously 2023 and we'll now see what happens as a result of the recent elections But you know it doesn't take a tremendous amount of deductive reasoning Right to sort of begin to figure out how you can use special voting arrangements to potentially move the needle in a way That could be could be perceived as problematic You know that's that's certainly sort of one example another example that you touched on right in your paper That I think is worth knowing a little different, but worth noting is I observed with OSCE Hungary's 2022 elections There was a rule on the books that allowed overseas voters if they didn't have a residence to be able to vote by mail It did not allow overseas voters, right that did have a residence in country to be able to vote by mail And for those who are familiar with elections, right, you know and election administration It that's a real headscratcher as to what would be a legitimate reason to make that kind of distinction and People shouldn't view these things in a vacuum, right when you are looking at folks And I'll say it like an urban, right or PIS, right? You know in countries where there has been backsliding and of course International idea has that global index on democracy and they have the latest one coming out, you know We you know this this report goes hand-in-hand with that and so I think it's really important, right? That we are you know seeing whether or not a practice on its face is backed by the evidence And if it's not we ought to be looking really carefully as to why in fact, it's being brought to bear Thank you, thank you so much and our latest the global state of democracy report actually came out last week So it's fresh off the press if anyone is interested in reading that too It's a good compliment because it exists some of the political trends and democratic trends around the world So thanks for raising that point David. I think that's that's very good the weaponization of some of these Types of special voting arrangements and the importance of looking at the the fine print and the the specific implementation Regulations that may look harmless at first glance But they may have political motivations and also the important role I think you didn't mention it, but I'm thinking of civil society in Looking at the fine print and denouncing some of those when they can be used for political means I Think I wanted to go back to to Amber you touched a little bit on the US context But I think that since we are here and since we have a lot of people online that are not so familiar with the US context is Could you tell us a little bit more about why special voting arrangements? and and Beyond also postal voting, but all the postal voting is an important element why they matter in the US context What what type of special voting arrangements are most relevant in the US? And I know it's difficult to draw a generalization because it varies across states but also the the current state of play I think things have changed after the The 2020 elections and leading up to the 2024 elections What what can you say in terms of lessons learned and and and the stakes ahead? Sure, and thanks for the question. So in the in the US All the states run their election processes differently all the laws are written differently by state and that actually You know some people argue that that is advantageous to security. I actually think it introduces security issues with regards to disinfo and it's easy to spread disinfo because the rules vary so much the deadlines vary so much the You know all of these components Absentee voting or vote by mail has been used since the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln wanted to make sure soldiers could vote and our history with it is long and one that Really is focused on making sure that people are enfranchised Respecting the fact that it's a large country and if you're working elsewhere in the country You are going to need opportunities and then I think the other when you look at where it's grown So the United States, it's grow. It's mostly grown in the West far faster at a far faster pace than Then Eastern or or Southern States the other thing that's grown in the West is just innovation broadly in Inelection administration same-day registration modernization of Automated voter registration And when you actually look at the map and I I give this reference quite a bit to The growth of women's suffrage and where it was passed first it was passed in all the western states first 20 years before it ever met its day in DC and When you then look and kind of fast forward to where there's been more expansion of early voting more expansion of Voting at home and other innovations in technology ballot tracking as we as we mentioned actually started in Denver We started it on my team Built it internally with a partner outside back in 2009 and now more than a hundred million people in the United States Have access to that system and hopefully more people across the globe will have access to that system But the growth I think is an important story in terms of the United States because the other factor in Western States is That Western States tend to have citizen legislatures. So meaning very long ballots But France is often referenced In the United States is why don't we just hand count ballots and it makes me laugh because it's like one You know one race in a presidential cycle Whereas a ballot in the West might be six pages long And take an hour and a half to actually read it if you read the entire thing and so When you've got those the long ballots like that Western States voters have actually chosen to vote at home because They don't want to stand at a booth for two hours And in some cases you're actually limited to 20 minutes in the booth and you don't have an ability to research any issues That you're not sure about you might not know with the judge's name on the list of 75 judges that we have to vote for So I think that that you know our growth is indicative of not just convenience or not just You know those sorts of things it's it's really a Growth in response to the other complications that we have in our elections And we've done a number of things. I mean I mentioned the Postal Service. It is a very trusted entity I think that is one of the reasons why We have had success in expansion of this Ballot-tracking is another not only transparency, but accountability and security feature and a very important one By the way, and I think the final thing I would say as well on this is that Just like with conventional voting if you don't implement the system correctly if you don't have good processes If you don't have good procedures if you don't have good laws on the books and regulatory Control of it you're gonna have a terrible election just as you would with any special voting arrangement and What's interesting as I look at the United States? Our biggest challenges have nothing to do with postal voting if you look over time It's actually involved the length of lines or technology failures on election day or issues with COVID was a big one obviously with an emergency But when you look at where most of the issues that get a lot of time spent on them from a research perspective Or what have you it often involves election day problems length of lines difficult Circumstances and yet that's the method of voting That has been you know deployed the most widely for the longest length of time And so I also think that you know back to the S S V a's can be a really good solution for challenges that you know often get overlooked or not talked about extensively That that often occur on election day Thanks for raising that and making the point since we're I mean we talk about potential risks in the handbook because the focus is special voting arrangements, but I think it's very important to make the point that there are risks also with poorly implemented Conventional voting, so absolutely. I wanted to turn to you David because You've you you are working on Maline interference in elections across the world and and From your experience what what what works? What have you seen working as countermeasures to threats and and and how what recommendations would you give to dealing with? potential malign actors who might want to deliberately target Vulnerable areas of the electoral cycle in different contexts. Sure. You know, I mean obviously to your point. I spend time by looking at Autocratic actors and their behaviors to try to interfere in elections whether it's some of the domestic actors, right? I just recently mentioned or more authoritarian ones like Russia China and Iran and I was just in Moldova for local elections Just the other week and I know of course that Odeir was about as forward As forward as they would prefer to be by calling out the foreign interference efforts in those elections which Yes, we jokingly on the ground referred to as right from Greece But they clearly was rushing interference the I think you know when we think about how best to sort of counter These efforts, you know, I think there are a few things that are really important One is to be able to maintain awareness about how these bad actors are evolving and what their capabilities are Whether we're talking about generative AI technologies And how they can be deployed, you know, we are now in such an interconnected world That what goes on in Slovakia? matters here and vice versa and I think it's you know, we Homeland security threat assessment for the Department of Homeland Security Right has spoken about certain authoritarian actors and the fact that they may use those tools It's also important to be aware, right of just what other countries may be doing in terms of cyber attacks right information operations or perhaps some sort of hybrid you know hybrid form as folks here know, I mean Russian interference in the 2016 US election that may have been sort of a newfound thing to many Americans But it certainly wasn't a newfound thing to folks in other parts of the world You know and whether we were talking about Ukraine in 2014 or elsewhere, right the examples go on and on so I think awareness is important I think collaboration between electoral management bodies, right law enforcement and Intel is really important I think building in resilience, right so that you are able to prevent attacks Detect Them in the event that they come and recover if necessary is really important as well, right? It's really important that election officials, right as well as their partners understand what spearfishing is How to identify it what to do about it it's really important that if We see a voter registration system that's got malicious activities sort of occurring that we know how to Fast-track that and get somebody on that and it's really important that we have a plan to recover, right? And and you know this isn't just the United States, right? But if you have a if you are in a country where you have a piece of voting equipment and it becomes inoperable Right there needs to be plan B If you have a website that goes down because of a DDoS attack You need to have a way of being able to continue to count out the votes and get information And so I mean it's a point that goes back to something Amber said and was in the report Stavon talked about this as well as sort of you know having Having that resilience really really is important And then I think the third thing that's really important about this is having a whole of society effort Which I know is sort of metaphorical we get more into it on countering this right? It is not enough For the folks in this room to be dealing with it's not enough though You know it's really important for government to dealing with this and we saw and what France was able to do in 2027 teams in terms of pushing back on Russian interference, but we really do need you know people that are willing to serve as poll workers We need to make sure that we have people that are turning out in high numbers And you know to Amber's point you know what I mean one of the best ways to deal with this is if you have Very high voter turnout right that is one of the best forms of medicine to sort of combat right some of these efforts so you know awareness Sharing of information best practices and lessons learned right resilience building measures in terms of hard security and Information measures, and then I think what's really important is everybody needs to be trying to do their part at the very least Participating but hopefully more than that right whether it's serving as a poll worker Supporting your election official observing a process Thank you so much David and we're coming to the end of the session But I just wanted to end with a question to you Staphon you work for IFAS and IFAS supports electoral processes around the world mainly in global majority or global South countries We saw from the data that most special voting arrangements are implemented in OECD countries and that in non-OECD countries is much less common, but What of all this of what we've discussed today? and and the findings from the handbook are relevant for electoral assistance design and and what would you recommend for electoral assistance providers to To do when it comes to design and implementation and support to actors that are implementing special voting arrangements around the world First they should have listened through Peter's presentation. What it is what it entails. What are the options out there? I think the essential to know what are you looking at because sometimes The local discussion that's ongoing might talk about one to maybe three They don't know what the options are what the pros and the cons are what was needed because it might be a Better solution out there and and and by having a document and the database I would really put a plug in for the database since that's going to remain You know live and and an up-to-date, you know to really know what is out there and then based on that you can start Engaging and talking to these other EMBs. Okay. What worked what didn't work because sometimes we're not just looking for best practice We're looking for avoiding the bad practices as well, you know, you're looking for the shortcuts and what's going to make it better stronger and And and and and cheaper and then sometimes there is also questions might not just be about the The solution itself be that technology or or manual but it's like okay, so who within Your country what were the other state agencies that you needed to rely upon in order to deliver upon it Yes in the US they're fortunate to have the postal service Which is a trusted entity and in number of places that's also the case But maybe that is not the case, you know, so and how do we deal with that or they they gonna They might have this interest in going for electronic voting or even internet voting which might force them into a Negotiation discussion with the cyber agency of the country and that might be perceived to be in the pocket of the government of the day So that is then you need to be able to Take that kind of analysis and take the steps and say no that is For political reasons even though it's supposed to be politically neutral But you know the risks are too high for us to move forward with something like that But in general I would also say, you know looking from US perspective and the global perspective I would say that in the last five ten years US has increasingly become Much more relevant for us working on the international scene because it is really cutting edge on a lot of things You know, maybe it already started back in the debacle from 2000 when you introduced a lot of Technologies and that was some hard lessons learned whether they should have done that or not Or how they went about introducing technologies, but then we'll also have the natural disasters that are hitting other countries Well, we'll go to New Orleans. How did they deal with disaster and disaster resist resiliency and recovery, you know And now of course from the from the pandemic. Yes, initially the South Koreans and the Japanese got a lot of Kudos for how they went about it because they were sort of the first out bit of trial But if you look in what actually the US and these not on a state level, but at the counter level they managed to Pull off that is pretty pretty amazing huh, so therefore we're getting more requests from our Partners in in in the global south from yeah, maybe it is US that is actually a bit of a Of a branch leading ahead. I mean, but not just in the in the south We had during the mid-term elections the Swedes reach out to to I have to say hey You know we would like to come over and we said, I'm sure we can do the regular Circus of the DMV and these things well the DMV We do color And because we are postal voting and that tracking, you know, so sure So coming to DC was just icing the cake But what they really were looking for are some of the things that I was introduced in 2009 That still haven't been picked up By, you know colleagues in in the South because sometimes it's difficult to Go to the US and ask for their solutions Okay, great no Very important point the world can stand to learn from all the good And innovative experiences from the US and I would say also there is room for learning the other way around right and that's why I've Really enjoyed this conversation that it looked at both aspects, but before we end the session I wanted to see if there was any questions from the audience either here in the room or or online Now Alex, what did you say any questions? Okay, no my internet connection is too slow But we can we can answer them later on I think we're coming to the end of the session before we end I was wondering if there's any final message that anyone in the panel wants to give that we haven't touched on and I'll start with you Peter because you Presented a fascinating overview of the findings. Is there anything else that you want to have the audience come away with? Maybe just one one last element when Stefan was talking I was also reminded both in the developing Democracies assistance context of course the important question of sustainability and when you reform when you bring in those new systems Don't only think about the next election, which is sometimes a risk in an assistance context Why the wish list is long and you might just want to get this extra gadget But really think about the long-term sustainability and I think also here the US has something interesting to learn from Help America vote 2000 lots of voting machines. They were great Maybe the first instance but then actually turned out to be quite an expensive operation to really maintain them keep them up Today it replaced him as needed and so on and I think something similar can be said for special voting arrangements as well, especially in Developing democracies be careful about what that means in the long term that you are able to also maintain and run those Successfully in a trustworthy manner not studied in the end comes at the cost of maybe the conventional voting that then all of them too Many resources are needed for those so really context Sustainable maybe at the last Yeah, and Bert you do you want to say something? Yeah, so I think a Big issue I mean for both the conventional way of voting and also any of the new special voting opportunities It's it's it's about the process It's about how it's designed and you can you can have terrible conventional voting and you can have terrible special voting Circumstances if you don't plan appropriately or design the laws appropriately, and I think one of the things that in the United States In our in my experience and in the various states I've worked in when local officials are involved in designing the laws and making sure that the right Problems are being solved and the right questions are being answered It absolutely is critical to success and local officials are really largely here in the United States The ones that have led a lot of these innovative efforts. It hasn't been Necessarily politicians it hasn't been just the chief person in charge of elections But it's been designed at the local level, and I think it's important that we kind of always keep our eye on what problem Are we trying to solve? and You know with special circumstances, especially postal You it trust in the service that's being delivered and who's going to be doing that is a critical factor And the one final example that I actually just wanted to call out Is Ukraine and I've met many times now with the CEO of the Ukrainian post office He was just here and gotten a ward from the Smithsonian for his work But they are delivering everything to their citizens They're delivering Wi-Fi and they're delivering checks and they're now Contemplating how they can support in the voting process And so they are one of the most trusted institutions right now in Ukraine and they're a lifeline to their citizens And I think we should always you know kind of in the context of Democracy and and and what have you also think about the ways that some of the applicability applies on these special Circumstances to everything else that might be needed by citizens Thanks, Amber for also for raising and reminding us of the case of Ukraine David Do you want to say something to you I'll give it brief I mean I I think that this paper here underscores the importance of being able to share Practices and communicate across the globe, you know, I think there was a time in the US where we're talking Which is talking to folks from in a different state was sort of seen as almost a foreign concept I think we're at a point where You need to be able to you know, whether you're an election management official or One of those partners that's supporting them to be to be looking for best practices wherever they may be For those that you know because we saw this right for those French officials that wanted to poo poo u.s. Male voting, you know, they can check out what's going on in Bavaria right during the pandemic um, you know I think that you know, I don't think there's any one right entity that sort of has a monopoly Right sort of on good ideas. I mean obviously tonight We're here and we're doing this here in the US because I think of many of the strides The US has made and perhaps because of the climate that currently exists ahead of 2024 But I think it's really critical whether we're talking about defending our election infrastructure Or being innovative in what we're trying to do that we're looking far and wide and I think you know This paper the stuff what we do is is an effort to try I think and you know Sit where people are and think about ways they can be able to move the needle just a bit more forward right going forward You know, obviously nobody wants a rehash of the pandemic But perhaps one of the decent things that perhaps has come out of that is to see The variety of innovations that we've seen countries across the world try and engage in to attempt to meet folks Where they are and perhaps be a little more resilient ahead of perhaps more turbulent elections in the next couple years Just one quick point and that is Introducing SVA is often very political. I mean elections politics, you know at its core and and and Sometimes it's it's super sensitive To suggest something and support something like this in in in some countries So I think it's upon ourselves to really Take full advantage of this great handbook to educate ourselves What is it really working? Are we really suggesting the best possible solution and not just us as you know Election technical service providers, but I think also the ones that pay our bills and sometimes paying for our institutions Like also donors need to read on this they need to coordinate and have a common language when it comes to SVA's so at least they know what they're talking about and then makes it easier to implement as well. So thank you Great. Thank you so much to all of you first to Peter for presenting For leading the effort of and the experts that wrote this handbook and for presenting the key findings It's an excellent piece of work It has taken many years to to finalize and it will be I hope and I'm sure a reference point for All of us in the election community and those that are interested in in this overall across the world Thanks also to our excellent panel that provided these very rich perspectives. I've really enjoyed learning from you and Hopefully this is the start of a conversation I really like the fact that we have this global and the US perspective and that it's not often that they come together So I really I'm really happy that we were able to to bring all of you here And thanks for those that joined us in in the room I know everyone has busy schedules, so we really appreciate that and all of those that are joining us online have have a nice evening. Thanks