Guidelines for Understanding, Adjudicating, and Resolving Disputes in Elections challenge the election’s results; however, this training session is meant to convey merely the essential level of knowledge needed to initiate or survive the complaint process, not how to determine whether to engage in it at all. A separate training program detailing political concerns throughout the election cycle may be an attractive option to the parties in attendance. Conclusion A. General Lessons Learned Elections worldwide are becoming more and more litigious. In countries where complaints adjudication processes are still evolving, the number of complaints and challenges filed tends to far exceed the number of cases that are actually heard and acted upon resulting in some kind of remedy. Many are dismissed on technical grounds, on the basis that they were submitted to the wrong authoritative body, or on the basis that they were not submitted on time. There are also those unfortunate trends involving submissions of frivolous cases which are politically motivated and intended to cloud the election process and impede the certification of results. The nature of the remedies that can be expected in the event that the adjudication body rules in favor of the complainant is often misunderstood by complainants. Too often complaints are filed by stakeholders who believe that the violation they are reporting must have affected the results, without an understanding that proving that causality is often extremely difficult. It would be difficult to prove that the results were affected, for example, because poll workers failed to consistently ensure that family voting was prevented, or that some voters appeared to have been allowed to vote without showing identification. Likewise, the actual effect of certain campaign violations on the election outcome is impossible to prove with any degree of certainty. It may be a fact that the political posters were vandalized, for example, but demonstrating the effect of such vandalism on the outcome of an election is almost impossible to discern with any degree of legal certainty. 152