International Foundation for Electoral Systems Excerpts from IFES Electoral Integrity Assessments (EIA) and Election Dispute Resolution (EDR) Assessments “Due to the absence of codified procedures…there was no common process used by election complaints centers.” - IFES Sri Lanka EIA 2016 “There is no formal mechanism for filing pre-election/campaign complaints, and the Election Day complaints process remains unclear.” - IFES Myanmar EIA 2015 “Material gaps and confusion in the regulatory framework related to the points of entry, filing process, investigation procedures and decision-making process.” - IFES Pakistan EIA 2013 “Interlocutors advised that while they received written notification of decisions, they were often copied and pasted, without a substantiated explanation or outlining any results of investigation.” - IFES Cambodia EDR 2014 “…[a]ttempts…to bring consistency and transparency to the process are not matched by all relevant adjudication bodies.” - IFES Georgia EIA 2015 “The rules governing the resolution of other types of disputes and violations…are essentially nonexistent.” - IFES The Gambia EIA 2017 “Individual arbitrators administer cases as they see fit rather than according to a publicly disclosed and consistently applied procedural framework.” - IFES Jordan EDR 2016 Managing Election Cases Case management encompasses the tools and techniques through which a dispute or violation is processed and tracked, with the aim of facilitating the supervision, administration and disposition of the case. In elections, the importance of reasonable deadlines and efficient proceedings is acute, since the holders of power and the functioning of government might be in question. Studies of case management in the United States have also found that impetus for the accelerated development of the court management profession included “uneven trial court performance…; the chronic underfunding of trial courts…; weak and even corrupt local court management; ever-worsening backlogs, times to disposition and waiting times; and undue and inappropriate interference in trial court functions by local executive and legislative agencies and personnel.”27 All of these factors undermine the provision of procedural justice. The U.S. National Center for State Courts has examined the link between the expeditious and wellmanaged administration of justice and the provision of justice outcomes (i.e., the purpose for which courts and tribunals exist): “Justice is lost with the passage of time…No matter how you look at it, whether it’s a civil or a criminal matter, time destroys the purposes of courts. We study case management because case management is the way we get rid of the waiting time, [by] which we control 27 Geoff Gallas and Edward Gallas, Court Management Past, Present and Future: A Comment on Lawson and Howard, 15 Just. Sys. J. 605, at 605-609 (1991). 14