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I.
CDL-AD(2020)025
Introduction
1. The topic of election dispute resolution is recurrent in reports issued by international
election observers as well as in electoral opinions1 of the Venice Commission2 and the Office
for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE (OSCE/ODIHR).3 The Council for
Democratic Elections and the Venice Commission have thus decided to conduct a
comparative study on the issue of electoral disputes and their settlement.4
2. When analysing relevant legislation of its member States,5 the Commission observed a
number of trends, either positive or negative. The purpose of this report is to identify such
trends in the settlement of electoral disputes throughout Venice Commission’s member
States, in view of the elaboration of recommendations aimed at improving both laws and
practice in member States. On the basis of the legislative data collected, this report will focus
on dispute resolution concerning national elections in the various member States (both
presidential and parliamentary elections). Moreover, many of its findings entail local and
regional elections too, considering that the report covers mainly the procedural elements of
election dispute resolution.6
3. It is important to make a few methodological remarks at this stage. First of all, the activity
of the electoral management bodies – also called election commissions, committees, councils,
boards – as well as of the other competent bodies (courts, parliaments etc.) on the resolution
of electoral disputes is governed mostly by electoral legislation. The secretariat of the Venice
Commission has been able to collect electoral laws – or election codes, depending on the
countries’ legislation – of 59 member States of the Venice Commission out of 62, for which
the legislation was available in English or French – sometimes in Spanish.7
4. The report focuses on the electoral legislation of these 59 member States and therefore
does not refer to other pieces of legislation which may also cover complaints and appeals’
procedures in the electoral field, e.g. general administrative or procedural laws or codes.
However, it should be emphasised that the electoral legislation of the member States varies
in scope and may not be exhaustive as to the legal remedies available regarding electoral
disputes. Therefore, the comparative overview in this report should be read with the
reservation that it does not cover legal remedies beyond electoral legislation in the narrow
sense.
5. The report refers on a regular basis to electoral opinions adopted by the Venice
Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR in order to illustrate the problematic elements observed
in the election dispute resolution systems of the various Venice Commission’s member States.
The references also reinforce the substance of the present report, beyond the electoral
legislation as such.
1
See in this respect the 2017 Compilation of Venice Commission opinions and reports concerning election dispute
resolution and the opinions quoted. All quoted documents, in particular those of the Venice Commission, are to be
found in Annex 2.
2 https://www.venice.coe.int.
3 https://www.osce.org/odihr.
4 The 16th European Conference of Electoral Management Bodies which took place in Bratislava, Slovak Republic,
on 27-28 June 2019, was precisely organised in the context of this report.
5 The relevant legislation is accessible at: https://www.venice.coe.int/WebForms/pages/?p=04_EL_EDR.
Reference document: CDL-REF(2019)010.
6 It should however be mentioned that some procedural rules can differ depending on the type of elections, either
local, regional or national. This can be the case for instance concerning the bodies competent on a certain type of
grounds or concerning the body competent on appeal.
7 Electoral laws of Cyprus, Greece and Israel do not seem to exist in English or French, which prevented the
secretariat and the rapporteurs of the present report to analyse the electoral laws of these member States of the
Venice Commission. The member States are mainly mentioned throughout the report as “the countries analysed”
for the sake of simplification.