Experience has shown that international election monitoring can contribute to building the foundation for democracy. In politically uncertain environments of entrenched conflict, such as Afghanistan today, election monitoring can contribute to public confidence in the integrity of elections by encouraging fairer electoral rules, better campaign practices, and a more informed electorate. By increasing transparency, election monitoring deters fraud and helps reduce irregularities in election administration. Election monitoring also can provide meaningful moral support to democratic activists or opposition political leaders, and it educates audiences around the world about the struggle for democracy in transitional countries. Properly conceived and implemented, comprehensive international election monitoring not only provides an objective assessment of a given country’s electoral process but can also promote the integrity of the elections and related institutions, encourage public participation, and reinforce domestic engagement in democratic politics.

There is now an international consensus that democratic elections extend far beyond the activities on Election Day, and, thus, election monitoring should have broad scope. Accordingly, Democracy International’s election observation mission to Afghanistan will assess a broad range of substantive issues, including: (a) the administration of the election, including the processes of voter registration, balloting, counting, and complaint resolution; (b) the institutional framework for the election, including election laws, the credibility and neutrality of the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC) and the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC); and (c) the political context and environment in which the election takes place, including the extent of freedoms of speech, movement and association, the fairness of the media, the opportunities for the opposition to compete, and the nature of the campaign. In general, monitoring missions should consider all phases of an election process over time, including the campaign and pre-election period, the balloting and initial counting, the post-election aggregation and tabulation of votes and adjudication of complaints, and the formation of a new government or parliament.