Principle 1: Prompt Investigation be balanced with the requirement to ensure other essential elements of due process are met.”66 In many countries, the timelines under which election commissions and administrative courts operate when investigating and resolving electoral disputes are unreasonable and due process protections are not met. In Armenia, for example, the interlocutors interviewed for an IFES technical election assessment generally agreed that administrative election personnel who are tasked with investigating and adjudicating complaints struggle to meet deadlines and are eager to dismiss cases on procedural grounds in order to meet the tight deadlines established in the law, which undermines due process protections. The same interlocutors stated that the administrative courts struggle to meet deadlines and tend to dismiss cases on procedural grounds because they do not have the time needed to properly investigate, hear, and resolve cases.67 In complex cases that require in-depth investigations that cover large distances and involve numerous individuals, unreasonably tight deadlines further stretch the ability of under-resourced adjudicative bodies to conduct a thorough investigation and hold effective hearings. This limits their ability to ensure that they discover and verify the facts of claims before they make decisions. When overly restrictive timelines run counter to due process protections, they undermine electoral justice.68 In highly contentious environments, where investigators and adjudicators work under time and political pressures, systems that methodically prioritize and categorize complaints can allow investigators to focus on outcome-determinative cases, to strategically apply available resources, and to give adjudicators the ability to protect the due process and dismiss complaints that do not show probable cause.69 However, to reinforce real and perceived fairness, the triage process must be determined before an election takes place, the notice about the process must be given to stakeholders, and it must be applied uniformly. Uniform standards provide an investigative body with consistency and give notice to stakeholders of both the procedural expectations and the likely outcome of the process. More importantly, established standards ensure the 66 Katherine Ellena, Chad Vickery, & Lisa Reppell, IFES, Elections on Trial: The Effective Management of Election Disputes and Violations 28 (2018). 67 Staffan Darnolf, Heather Szilagyi, & Chad Vickery, IFES, Technical Election Assessment Mission: Armenia 43 (2019). 68 See Ellena, Vickery, & Reppell, supra note 66. 69 Evidence is supportive of a judgment until the presentation of contradictory evidence; See Evidence, Black’s Law Dictionary (2d ed. 1910) (evidence is supportive of a judgment until the presentation of contradictory evidence). 43