Tag Archives | election monitoring

Cleaning up Georgia’s elections

Georgians are getting the message: elections are important and tampering with the process has consequences. This year, there were fewer violations, leading to a cleaner election. It was hard work, however. From when the election process started in June to when people went to the polls on 8 October, Transparency International Georgia was on the […]

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Bulgarian politics: how to ensure a referendum fails

On Sunday, 25 October 2015, telephones started ringing at 7 am at the offices of Transparency International Bulgaria (TI Bulgaria). A team of eight colleagues was taking calls from concerned citizens. Another two colleagues with legal expertise started preparing complaints about voting irregularities. Welcome to election day, Bulgarian style. 6.8 million Bulgarians have the opportunity […]

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What does monitoring campaign finance tell us about Czech elections?

Transparency International Czech Republic has been monitoring campaign financing in the eight largest Czech cities and the results are not good. They show that nearly one-third of the parties monitored posted a near-failing grade for transparency. The recently published results show how secretive campaign income and expenses have become as campaigns get more expensive. Due […]

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Lessons from the election: low levels of transparency raise red flags in Turkey

The citizens of Turkey made history in August when they elected a president directly for the first time. The question now is what this means for Turkey in relation to its commitments to anti-corruption and good governance. Looking back at the election period, we can see few positive indicators and some important red flags regarding a fair, free and transparent election […]

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Armenia: Fighting back at the ballot box

On March 15th the Supreme Court in Armenia annulled the election results from Precinct No. 17/5 in Artashat, where I spent an unforgettable day in mid-February watching ballots being stuffed while I was physically pinned to a wall by a group of thugs. I never thought such overt cheating like ballot stuffing would happen. After […]

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Voting in Ukraine – The people lose in elections that were hardly free and fair

The elections here did not go well. Even the enormous expenses of installing cameras at polling stations didn’t provide transparent voting. Constant problems with connections, lack of experience in using of such systems and the rush in preparation for the elections turned the idea into a new kind of entertainment. Not surprisingly, the independent election […]

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Why do citizens sell their vote?

This weekend Bulgaria holds its presidential and local elections. Diana Kovatcheva, Executive Director of Transparency International Bulgaria, writes about their new report that has been making waves with concerns that vote-buying is an all too common practice. Transparency International Bulgaria has been monitoring the transparency of election campaigns for ten years (see our last report […]

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