Guidelines for Understanding, Adjudicating, and Resolving Disputes in Elections islature. The Electoral Court then oversees the permanent Electoral Boards (Juntas Electorales), which act as the EMBs at the departmental level. The Court’s electoral authority includes traditional management responsibilities, including voter registration and the actual conduct of elections. In addition, it oversees the internal elections of political parties and university elections nationwide. The Court also serves as the highest court on all election-related matters, including adjudication of electoral disputes and complaints. With the affirmative vote of six of its nine members, of which at least three must be politically impartial members, the Electoral Court has the authority to formally investigate the outcome of all elections and referendums, to reject election results and declare them null and void, and to carry out scrutiny of ballot results. Moreover, the court has the exclusive authority to issue administrative, jurisdictional and regulatory acts, and none of the acts it issues can be revised by any branch of government. This latter power is unique in the government of Uruguay — no other body may promulgate rules or laws in its field of expertise that may not be reviewed by another governmental entity. This political independence and absolute authority makes the Electoral Court of Uruguay an unusually powerful adjudicatory body. D. Country Example: Nigeria 19 In Nigeria, the Electoral Tribunals are mandated under the Constitution, and the 2006 Electoral Act No.2 also provides for the electoral complaints adjudication mechanisms. The Act states that election petitions arising from the conduct of a Presidential election are handled by the Court of Appeal and in any other election petition they are handled by the Election Petition Tribunal. The Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court can also have appellate jurisdiction. In the 1999 and 2003 elections, it took approximately five years for a petition to be adjudicated, and sometimes the complaints were simply ignored by the judges. After the 2003 elections, a huge effort to strengthen the complaints adjudication process in Nigeria was undertaken. The case management techniques that the Election Petition Tribunals followed, in IFES, Election Tribunal Assessment in Nigeria (May 2008) (report). 19 124