A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S ACCESS TO ELECTORAL JUSTICE The ECN’s legal department oversees the adjudication of disputes at the decentralized level, provides support to the board of commissioners in the adjudication of cases, and collects data and information related to electoral disputes. There is no dedicated department and no additional dedicated staff focused specifically on EDR. The lack of a “complaint unit” and resources may create some obstacles for election officials in building capacity and retaining knowledge in investigating and adjudicating election disputes from one cycle to the next. However, chief returning officers, who play important roles in adjudicating pre-election and counting-related disputes at the constituency level, are judges and legal officers for the House of Representatives and provincial elections, and judges, legal officers, and administrative officers for the local level elections. The law authorizes the election officer or returning officers to receive and address objections to voter lists or candidate nomination. As part of its general mandate to administer the elections, the ECN set up an electoral dispute resolution (EDR) committee and monitoring teams to address disputes related to breaches of the codes of conduct or campaign finance during the pre-election and election periods. In 2019, the ECN adopted a directive on EDR to clarify its mandate over election disputes throughout the election process. The ECN provides for a highly decentralized system with presiding officers, monitoring officers, returning officers, EDR (central) committees, and a board of commissioners all playing roles in the investigation or adjudication of disputes. For the 2022 elections, the ECN reduced the number of monitoring committees to streamline reporting and investigation of code of conduct breaches. It also further decentralized the monitoring process by appointing monitoring officers from their local districts rather than deploying them from Kathmandu. Complaints regarding election disputes, violations, or irregularities must be submitted in written or electronic form to returning officers, name registering officers, polling officers, or monitoring officers, or directly to the EDR committee as soon as the alleged violation is known. Any member of the EDR committee has the authority to determine the validity of the complaint and impose remedies and sanctions. Certain offenses, such as forging ballots, buying votes, requesting recounts of votes, or acts of violence must be referred directly to the relevant high court to issue rulings and impose sanctions. The Election Offences and Punishment Act defines physical or sexual violence during the election period as an election offense, which will be handled by the police and the court as criminal cases. Candidates must file election results petitions within 15 days of the announcement of results. All appeals to decisions made by the adjudicating authority must be made within 35 days of the announcement of results to the relevant High Court of the province (local elections) or constitutional bench of the Supreme Court (for federal and Provincial Assembly elections). The district courts also hear appeals related to election offenses. As noted in the 2018 EU EOM election final report, “The Constitution establishes a very broad jurisdiction for the Supreme Court to address any matter of fundamental rights which is brought before it by way of public interest litigation.” In the 2017 and 2022 elections, the Supreme Court received many petitions regarding “various aspects of electoral law and the operations of the ECN during the campaign period, as well as some cases filed in relation to the allocation of seats prior to the final declaration of election results” (2017) and on candidacy eligibility criteria and social media campaign (2022). Data Collection Methodology 59