Election Investigations Guidebook A note on election audits: Election audits are increasingly used as a means of settling disputes about electoral results. The terms “audit” and “recount” are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. A recount is a process by which ballots in an electoral contest are tallied again. Unlike a recount, an audit is undertaken to investigate alleged fraud or malpractice. An audit may include a recount of the votes, but it also involves other aspects of an investigation into allegations of fraud. While an election audit is a type of investigative process, it is not covered in detail in this Guidebook. A detailed discussion of the principles that should apply to election audits can be found in “Election Audits: International Principles that Protect Election Integrity,” by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and Democracy International (DI) (2015), available at https://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/2015_ifes_di_election_ audit_white_paper_0.pdf and for the avoidance of any perceptions of bias. As mentioned at the outset of this Guidebook, there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to how electoral complaints should be investigated and adjudicated, and there are many variations in legal traditions (including civil versus common law), institutional structures, procedural rules, and codification of different types of violations across countries. This Guidebook does not endeavor to present a model or models that all types of systems should adhere to – whether they are in large, well-resourced countries or smaller countries facing resource constraints. Rather, we offer a set of high-level standards to inform election investigations in practice, whatever system or structure exists in a particular country. 20