The less bureaucracy, the more democracy
06:20, October 9, 2013 | News | Electoral RightsThe Norwegian parliamentary elections were held on September 9, 2013. The elections were observed only by one public structure: the Norwegian Helsinki Committee that had invited 34 observers from countries in the former Soviet Union, who represented member organizations of the European Platform for Democratic Elections (by the invitation of the Norwegian Government the elections were also observed by officials from other states). Within the framework of the observation mission throughout September 5-11 trainings and meetings were set up with Norwegian political figures, candidates, public activities, and Mass Media. As international observers, Vardine Grigoryan and Ofelya Zalyan, staff members from Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, also participated in the observation mission as international observers.
Just before the visit, it was unequivocal that the observation mission experience of the elections in Norway would be quite different from those in Armenia. All of the observers who had arrived from former Soviet Union countries joked they would witness the most boring elections, where no single violation or incident would be recorded. The questions based on the expertise of post-Soviet countries confused the Norwegian officials: “why should there be multiple voting?”, “who and why should stuff the ballot box?”, “what carousel, what’s the sense of it?”
On the very first day of the visit, a meeting was organized in the Parliament of Norway, where the observers got acquainted with the history of the Norwegian Monarchy during the last century, the structure of the Parliament and its working order.
Since the municipalities were responsible for the organization of the elections in Norway, while the functions of the Central Election Commission were in fact carried out by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, the observation group also visited the municipality of Oslo, there the official responsible for the organization of elections presented the order of electronic tabulation of voting results.
On the second day, a well-known expert of electoral processes Kåre Vollan presented Norway’s election specifics. He also noted that on that morning the OSCE / ODIHR critical conclusion was released, where the lack of clear-cut regulations in the electoral code was particularly criticized as a result of which numerous procedures were actually determined by municipalities or by regional commissions at their own discretion.
Based on her own experience, representative of Norwegian Helsinki Committee Berit Lindeman stated that democracy wasn’t the detailed regulation of the electoral processes, but the respect for already existing legislation and not violating it. Democracy is the mutual trust between the Government and its people, high level of legal awareness and discipline underlies it. According to Lindeman, it is initially prohibited by the Constitution to lie, based on which everything is automatically regulated.
During the first two days of the trainings it was clear that the legislations had a number of “gaps”, which could create fertile soil for election violations.
For instance,
– The voter is free to get the ballot before the day of elections; it isn’t prohibited to vote at home and appear at the polling station with already voted ballot, however, even in case of the taken in ballot, it is first necessary to approach the ballot box, then present the folded ballot to the commission with an ID. Although there is a defined ballot sample, but the law doesn’t ban creative people to draw their own ballots and vote via that ballot. One can tick before the name of the preferred party on simple tissue and this will also be deemed as a valid ballot. The voters were also free to change the order of candidates nominated by the party in the ballot; however, it is necessary for 50% of all voters to make the same change to have it approved. The concerns that several ballots in the meantime can be cast into the ballot box are dispelled by the fact that the folded ballot is sealed by the commission after checking the ID card. And if someone attempts to cast several ballots into ballot box, then the sealed one out of the cast ones will deemed as valid.
Voters’ lists in several cities are online, due to which a person can vote at any polling station in the city. Moreover, if according to the voters’ list, the person turns out to have voted or the name is missing from the list, in case the person is willing to vote, they don’t refuse, but they put the ballot inside a separate envelope with the person’s data and submit it to the municipality for final decision regarding the validity of the vote.
– There is no pre-election “silence” in Norway and the election campaign isn’t even prohibited on the day of elections. The only restriction is that the party representatives are allowed to hold election campaigns at least 15 kilometers away from the nearest election precinct. Despite the fact that the law doesn’t restrict the election campaign on the day of voting in the vicinity of the election precinct, very often political parties agree not to hold campaigns that day. By the way, since each political party has separate ballots which are disseminated freely, the representative of the election campaign implementing party can provide the voter with its party list ballot as a campaign material.
– It also turns out that upon going for voting, it isn’t mandatory to have an ID card in Norway, if at least one out of the commission members personally knows the voter. By the way, ID cards weren’t at all required prior to 2009, when the same observation group invited from the post-Soviet countries recommended making amendments to the law in order to avoid abuses and require ID cards from the voters.
-Unlike the Republic of Armenia, elections in Norway aren’t limited by the voting day and early voting begins 2 months before the elections and ends on the last Friday before the election, although the tabulation and summary of votes is carried out on the voting day. Postal voting was also tested in Norway, but it was terminated due to concerns regarding the confidentiality of information. Due to the same reason, Norway still discusses the effectiveness of passing to the version of internet voting, since it is set forth in the Constitution that upon voting a citizen should be alone to exclude any impact on the voter, which cannot be ensured when the voter is in his/her own place with other family members.
“I had subsequently heard of the electoral institute and elections held in Scandinavian countries, but as they say, seeing it once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. What I saw here radically differs from the electoral processes held in Armenia, the results of my observations exceeded all my expectations”, mentions Ofelya Zalyan. Upon reaching the hotel from the airport, I was met by journalists, who were interested in electoral processes in Armenia and in my expectations about the upcoming elections.
It was a little difficult to answer these questions, especially, when I was asked by the journalist to draw a comparison between the elections in Norway and Armenia. I preferred to answer the last question after the elections when I have seen everything with my own eyes. In the evening of the voting day I was invited to an interview on TV and was asked the same question during the live broadcasting, “How would you assess Norway’s parliamentary elections, what comparisons can you draw between the elections held in Armenia?”
After visiting several election precincts on the first day of elections it was clear that there were no electoral frauds in Norway and the gaps and drawbacks existing in the legislation weren’t in fact important, what was important is that the level of legal awareness of citizens was high, the citizen above all prioritizes his voting right and trust the system and the ruling party doesn’t in any way use its status to strengthen its positions and abuse the trust of voters. Thus, this mutual trust and credo underlie the democracy: formation of the government by its people.
“At the polling stations everything possible was done to ensure the full protection of the citizens’ electoral right. There was a special polling booth in each polling station for persons with disabilities, where the names of the parties were written in Braille system, there was a magnifier, while the ballots were put on two shelves to make them accessible to persons using wheelchairs. The Commission members (commissions were comprised of 3 persons and support stuff) noted that even if the citizen needing help approaches with an assistant, nonetheless, one of the commission members also approaches the voting booth to make sure that the right of the person needing help to vote on his own will is not breached”, states Vardine Grigoryan.
Always ready commission members act in line with each word of the law and they don’t even know what punishment is defined in case of violation of the law. In case of dubious questions, they merely write down the question and pose it to a higher structure. According to one of the members of the commission, “The Norwegian people like abiding by the law, it is not important to us what sanctions are provided by law, if it is stipulated by law, then that is the right way, the Norwegians don’t break the law”.
“On September 9, I had the honor of meeting Drammen City Mayor and with the candidates of various nominated parties. During the meeting, various issues related to electoral processes were discussed, the meeting participants willingly answered all my questions by thoroughly and proudly presenting the specifics of electoral processes organized in Drammen. When we talked about election bribes, the Mayor noted only one case of election bribe, which caused a lot of turmoil and was subjected to severe criticism both by the society and the parties. The incident took place many years ago, when one of the representatives of the political parties bought food for some homeless citizen, so that the latter votes in favor of his party.
The mayor’s words regarding political actors of the post-Soviet countries were especially impressive, “The only problem of your political field is that your politicians are not professional, whereas, when nominating a candidate, each party in Norway chooses the best specialist, the best diplomat, politician, and it is not important how much money that person has on his accounts…”, noted Ofelya Zalyan.
At the end of the observation mission, the findings and recommendations presented by the observation group were transferred to relevant structures.