International Foundation for Electoral Systems and Democracy International more challenging for EMBs and international stakeholders, as seen in Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential election where disagreements between candidate teams in the audit warehouse were frequent. While political disagreements among even trained candidate agents may be inevitable, emphasizing and enforcing rules and procedures are important mitigating steps to limit these conflicts. Lack of clear and open information can also reduce public trust in the audit process. The remedial audit processes initiated in Kosovo in 2009 and 2010 revealed significant issues with counting and tabulation, which paradoxically served to erode confidence in these elections, despite the fact that the audit process improved the accuracy of the final results. 10 The Kosovo example illustrates the importance of educating the public on the purpose of the audit, how it is being conducted, how it contributes to more accurate results, and what to expect in terms of process and timelines. D. Evidentiary standards As the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights has affirmed, the “purpose of an investigation should be to secure independent evidence.” 11 The collection and corroboration of substantiated facts and evidence goes to the very heart of an elections investigation and any subsequent adjudication process that leads to the invalidation of votes. Audit investigators should make every effort to substantiate facts and evidence without relying on hearsay, assumptions, or suppositions. 12 An audit of election results based on claims of fraud must be managed according to the same basic evidentiary principles as other fraud investigations. Types of evidence. The United Nations General Assembly has declared that investigators have the responsibility to “identify and obtain all relevant information and evidence to establish facts relevant to an allegation, resulting in the facts being confirmed or refuted.” 13 To do so, investigators should consider multiple types of evidence to corroborate findings, assess the value of the evidence according to a clearly established standard of proof and, as necessary, follow applicable search and seizure policies. 14 International standards currently offer very little guidance on the specific type of evidence needed to validate electoral results. In their absence, we must look to case law of regional bodies, such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and international public law documents. In El-Masri v. the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, for example, the ECtHR defined a thorough investigation on the basis of substantiated evidence. Commenting on the necessity for the “prompt and thorough” investigation of rights violations, the Court explained, “That means that the authorities must always make a serious attempt to find out what happened and should not rely on hasty or ill-founded conclusions . . . [and] must take all reasonable steps available to them to secure the evidence concerning the incident.” 15 The ECtHR has reaffirmed the importance of substantiated evidence in several recent election-related cases. In Akatishi v. Azerbaijan, the applicant submitted that the decision by the Constituency Electoral Commission to disqualify him as a candidate for the National Assembly – for alleged bribery of voters, insulting his opponent and disrupting his opponent’s campaign – had been “arbitrary and based on 9