Election Violence Education and Resolution Project

Terms:

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In order to gather information on election violence that is consistent and comparable within a single nation, and in order to establish a global data-base that collects and assesses national experiences in monitoring and/or mitigating election violence, IFES developed common definitions and terms for use by organizations monitoring election violence:

• Election Violence: Any act or threat of violence (violence being physical or psychological harm to a person or damage to property) directed at anyone directly involved in an electoral event/process (voter, candidate, party officer, election worker, election monitor, journalist, etc), or any act or threat of violence which disrupts or attempts to disrupt any aspect of the electoral event/process (campaign, registration, voting, vote counting, etc).
• Pre-election period: Either the beginning of the voter registration period to election day, or the period of the political campaign ending prior to election day. This period is often defined by law or regulation.
• Election Day: The day or days on which polls are open for voters.
• Post-Election Period: The period of time immediately following Election Day until all votes are counted and all election results made public. Could include further time in which challenges or complaints are resolved.

To effectively implement a methodology to monitor election violence, it is similarly important to use consistent, clear terms to describe what is to be monitored in all phases of the monitoring exercise. The following chart organizes these terms and provides a description of each.

These terms serve as the framework of standard variables the EVER methodology uses to capture and document incidents of violence within our global database (coming soon). The database contains field data from Iraq, Ghana, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as international media reports from around the world during 2004.

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