Principle 2: Thorough Investigation Evidential Considerations around Election Technology The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) procured electronic voting machines (EVMs) for its 2018 national elections based on the rationale that EVMs can print as many copies of result protocols as requested by party agents. Since Congolese elections can attract high numbers of candidates and lists, the carbon-copy approach left many party agents empty-handed and thus deprived of actionable evidence for EDR. In 2018, the Congolese counting process produced two types of result protocols—those printed by the EVMs (fiches de résultats), which were given to party agents, and those hand-written by counting staff (process-verbaux), which were handed up the chain-of-custody to regional aggregation centers. When resultdeterminative discrepancies transpired between parallel candidate aggregation based on EVM-printed forms and the EMB official results, candidates petitioned the Constitutional Court and tried to enter the EVM-printed result forms into evidence. The Constitutional Court, however, rejected the EVM-printed result forms as inadmissible (even if they were signed by the head-of-polling station), holding that only the handwritten forms constituted conclusive evidence. missing in many existing electoral legal regimes.152 Just as there is currently no international consensus on the standard of evidence for the adjudication of administrative electoral disputes,153 there is also no uniform standard of evidence that is used to determine whether or not to proceed with investigations.154 In fact, there are scant provisions in election laws about evidentiary rules in general,155 and even less about those specifically related to the investigative process. Nevertheless, the notion of probable cause does give some guidance. 152 Cf. GUARDE, supra note 1, at 66 (discussing how, during the adjudication stage, “the exact standard [of evidence] to be applied in any particular case should be established in advance of the hearing rather than chosen by the arbiter on an ad hoc basis”). 153 See id. at 61–67. 154 The term “standard of evidence” refers to the degree to which one side in a dispute must prove its case in order to persuade the arbiter or finder of fact that it is correct. See generally id. at 61 (describing the three standards of evidence frequently applied in elections cases: preponderance of the evidence, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and clear and convincing evidence). In contrast, the term “standard of proof” here refers to the benchmark that an investigator can use to determine whether or not the available evidence substantiates a complaint. 155 Orozco-Henríquez et al., supra note 101, at 165. 65