Another case of electoral reforms occurred in 2012 due to an indirect administrative measure taken by the government of the day, which triggered the need for the European Commission to initiate a reform. The question concerned constituency boundaries and the number of parliamentary seats for parliamentary elections. The creation by the government of 45 additional administrative constituencies obliged the European Commission to create and expand constituencies from 230 in 2004 to 275 in 2012 to comply with electoral protocols such as Article 3 of the 1992 Law on the Representation of the People (PNDC 284), which states: To prevent any type of fraud, It is also recommended that the legal framework require the placement in public places of formats or documents showing the counting and counting of votes at each of the levels at which these operations were carried out. There is a possibility of fraud in that electoral authorities are not required to publicly disclose the results of counts and tables. Parliament has the power to enact all laws, including legal electoral reform. In practice, since its restructuring in 2005, the legal electoral reform process has been initiated by the National Electoral Commission through the Office of the Prosecutor General and the Minister of Justice, the Department of Judicial Officials and in cooperation with the Law Reform Commission (LRC). In particular, the LRC has a formal mandate to review all national legislation and make recommendations for reform. The specific electoral reforms resulting from the 2011-2014 process covered the political, legal and administrative fields. As a result, electoral reform proposals take place at different levels: constitutional, legislative, regulatory, institutional and operational.
The new issues or elective areas that were also identified and addressed in the ECN reform proposals were political financing, equal access to media, gender equality, inclusive participation and the use of technology. Disclosure reports should be submitted to the Political Finance Regulatory Authority established under the legal framework for these matters and, once submitted, every effort should be made to ensure that the information is made available to the public in a meaningful way. However, more than 25 per cent of countries that require some form of declaration from political parties or candidates do not require such information to be published. [xlvi] Approaches to monitoring and enforcement vary from country to country, but there is some consensus on fundamental issues, including “the independence of political financing regulators, the need for sanctions, oversight of party and campaign financing, and a clearly defined legal framework.” [xlviii] There are two basic categories of voters` lists: “Active or positive registration systems require individuals to apply to be registered as voters. In passive systems, the voters list is automatically compiled on the basis of residence or citizenship registers or another form of registration. [iii] Sometimes voters lists are created by a combination of these approaches. “Active” registration systems put the voter at the centre and, therefore, informing and motivating voters to register is a necessary addition. In general, “somewhat more likely to exclude ineligible individuals, such as those who have died or emigrated permanently from the country.” [iv] Passive or state-initiated systems may take the form of draws of a voters list from other government documents, such as a national register, or may be created solely for election by door-to-door enumeration or a combination of both.
The success of this approach is directly influenced by the reliability and timeliness of national registers when the voters list is compiled or compiled from existing registers. In general, comprehensive active systems are “more likely to ensure that all eligible voters are registered, although they do not guarantee that more of these voters will actually vote.” [v] Discussions with the political parties took place under a dual agreement. Initially, legal reform issues, including bills, were discussed at meetings of provincial and federal party liaison committees. The PLC and NPLC form the platform established by regulation under the Law on the Electoral Commission. The overall objective of the CLP is: In the Solomon Islands, a decade after a period of political and social turmoil that led the government to call for direct Australian intervention to restore political stability and social order [2], there are signs of increasing stability in the political landscape. The electoral system has recently received an additional democratic structure with the passage of the Electoral Integrity Act (2014) [3] at the close of the 9th Parliament since full independence from Great Britain. The organization of territorial, political and state systems differs from one country to another and influences the design of the electoral framework. Similarly, the legal instruments on which the electoral framework is based may differ considerably and be further differentiated by different legal traditions interpreting and applying the law. These fundamental principles have a major influence on the design and revision of the legal framework for elections in order to be relevant to the country concerned. However, it can be said that a legal framework needs to be structured in such a way as to incorporate the following principles: In cooperation with the EU follow-on mission deployed in December 2012, the MEC organised a joint roundtable with the overall aim of discussing “the next steps towards Malawi`s historic tripartite elections in 2014”, with a focus on exchanging views and setting priorities for Malawi (EU EFM Report 2013: 42).
