i) Total or partial recount
518. Electoral law treats full and partial recounts in diverse ways. There are
four main trends:
a. to provide in the constitution or by statute for a total recount of the
vote in any election, whether or not the result was close, as in Costa
Rica before the September 2009 amendment and in the Netherlands;
b. to provide by law for a total recount in cases where the results are
close, either automatically or at the request of an interested party, as in
Canada, Hungary, Lithuania, Mexico since the 2007 reform, and some
states of the United States;
c. to provide for a partial recount only at certain polling stations for which
it is legally justified, as in the vast majority of EDR systems; and
d. not to provide expressly by law for total or partial recounts, as in Peru
and at least three states in the USA.
Total recount of the vote in each and every election, regardless of the result
519. In the Netherlands and Costa Rica (before the 2009 amendment) the law
has established that the EMB (respectively the Electoral Council, Kiesraad,
and the Supreme Elections Tribunal) has the duty to carry out a new tally
of the vote received at each and every polling station, regardless of whether
the result is close or of whether it has been challenged. During the weeks
following election day, the EMB carries out a total manual recount regardless
of the circumstances. It is this count which, strictly speaking, is the official
vote count. Even though this confers high levels of credibility and legitimacy
on the result, it is clear that it is easier to implement in societies in which the
electorate is not large.
520. In Costa Rica and the Netherlands everything done by the polling
officers is subject to review and may be corrected by the highest-level EMB.
It has powers to review the actions at the polling stations because they
are subordinate organs. In Costa Rica, where the polling officers at local
level are proposed by political parties, the Supreme Elections Tribunal
has important guarantees of independence and impartiality and enjoys
considerable prestige because of its honest and efficient performance over
more than 60 years.
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7. Basic elements of EDR systems
• the annulment of the votes received at a certain number of polling stations,
based on a determination that there were substantial irregularities at
those polling stations which affected the results; and/or
• in some systems, the deduction of any votes proved upon scrutiny to be
invalid or void.