IFES Practitioner Brief on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Elections if mediation were directly encouraged by the law.” 90 The introduction of mediation in the electoral law or the judiciary’s rules of procedure, as well as the support of the judicial leadership, could give the necessary encouragement to the judiciary to introduce mediation as a first step to resolving election disputes. In other countries, courts may be reluctant to introduce ADR practices due to the fundamental rights at stake in an election—whether the right to vote and stand for election or freedoms of assembly, association, and expression— and may wish to retain full control of the election dispute process. This reluctance may be well-founded for postelection disputes and issues directly tied to fundamental rights—such as candidate nomination. Indeed, election results petitions require speedy adjudication, can affect the stability of a country, and can involve drastic remedies, such as annulling the results of an election. Some interviewees also mentioned the concern for tight deadlines, notably in Europe, where the law provides 48 to 72 hours for administrative court or court of appeals to revolve election results petitions, making it impossible to introduce ADR without violating the legal deadline. 91 However, these concerns can be addressed by ensuring that a disputant retains the right to bring his or her case to court after using an ADR process and constraining these processes to tight deadlines. But for matters where the validity of the election results is questioned, the court should retain exclusive powers to make that determination. Nonetheless, in some countries, extraordinary mediation efforts during the post-election period, including by international actors, have shown positive outcomes when a results conflict is polarizing the country and potentially leading to political violence and bloodshed. Considering the challenges and risks presented in this section, the legislature, EMB, and judiciary should carefully establish criteria and safeguards for a court-led ADR process that ensures the right to due process is not undermined, nor trust lost in the impartial, fair, and just resolution of pre-election disputes. These concerns can be mitigated by ensuring that a disputant retains the right to bring his or her case to court after using an ADR process—as an appeal or first instance, and by clarifying the proof needed to show the attempt or conduct of ADR as a first stage of the process. If necessary, legal deadlines for bringing a case to court should be stayed while ADR is being pursued in good faith, or strict deadlines should be set, as in Indonesia, where Bawaslu has a two-day period to mediate. The ADR process should also be designed to ensure a fair process and just outcome so that the judiciary can feel confident in it as a suitable complementary mechanism. Inter-institutional cooperation with the EMB to better understand existing mechanisms using mediation or conciliation of disputes in the pre-election period is also important. The Council of Europe has set out a Statement of European Best Practice related to courts’ interaction with ADR processes, which provides detailed guidance on the issues. 92 Kyselova, T. (2017). Integration of mediation into Ukrainian court system: Policy paper. Council of Europe. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3054519 91 Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Albania. 92 The relationship between formal and informal justice: the courts and informal dispute resolution: Report of the European Law Institute and of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary. (2018). European Law Institute. https://www.europeanlawinstitute.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/p_eli/Publications/ADR_Statement.pdf 90 41