The Electoral Integrity Project: The Year in Elections, 2015

Abstract

The Electoral Integrity Project's "Year in Elections Report 2015" report covers 180 national parliamentary and presidential contests held from mid-2012 to end-2015 in 139 countries worldwide, including 54 national elections during 2015. Elections around the world are often manipulated through vote rigging and corruption, intimidation, and violence. Political finance is flawed by problems of imbalance, corruption and bribery. Malpractices have been found to undermine civic engagement, political accountability, and confidence in democracy. These problems arise despite the fact that each year the international community invests about half a billion US dollars to improve elections.But which contests are flawed or failed? Evidence is gathered by the Electoral Integrity Project from a global survey of more than 2,000 election experts. Immediately after each contest, the survey asks domestic and international experts to monitor the quality of an election based on 49 indicators. These responses are clustered into eleven stages occurring during the electoral cycle and summed to construct an overall 100-point expert Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) index and ranking. 'Failed' elections are defined as those which fall below 40 on any of the 100-point scales. Flawed contests are rated 40-50 on the PEI index.The EIP is an independent research project based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University, directed by Professor Pippa Norris.