 I've streamed on Facebook and the recordings will be posted on International Ideas' YouTube channel. So, warm welcome everyone, all the participants on Webex and all our spectators on Facebook. My name is Lina Rekkila-Tamang. I'm a director for Asia and the Pacific Programme at International Idea and I'm joining this lecture from Canberra from Australia where our regional office is located and hence would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land. I live and work in another people and pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging. Today's lecture is entitled Special Voting Arrangements Between the Convenience of Voting and the Integrity of Elections. This lecture is part of the series of online lectures conducted by International Idea and Friends and the friends include organizations based in Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. And I would like to let you know that we have a pre-lecture survey is now open for another 10 minutes or so. So it's running for another 10 minutes. Please do fill it in. It provides us a lot of valuable information regarding the content of this. And there will be a couple of pop-up questions during the question and answer session. So keep an eye on your screens for that. Now I'm so very pleased to introduce you today's lecturer, my colleague and friend, Therese Piers Lanela, who is the head of our election team at International Idea. And she's joining us from Stockholm, Sweden, where it is very, very early morning there at the moment. As many of you know, International Idea is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. And Therese is one of those few who were part of the original group in 1995 when Idea was founded. That was the time of great enthusiasm and number of innovations came up. As many of you have come across with ACE or rich curriculum, Therese being very much the founding mother of many of those innovations. Already prior, Therese had worked on many what we can call truly historical elections with UN in Mozambique in 1994, in Cambodia in 1992, 93. And in between Idea, she has also worked for EU, for UN, CARTHUS Centre, IFES and many other organizations of our field. And is now back at International Idea. And also, and this is important also in view of our today's topic, she's currently finalizing her PhD on trust in electoral institutions at the Australian National University. I'm so very happy that you are able to join us today, Therese, and over to you. Thank you for the next 20 minutes. Thank you so much and greetings everybody greetings friends greetings future friends. It is such an absolute delight and pleasure to be here with you through this technology. Imagine that so you can see out here as Lena said it's very early that's the window up there. That's the darkness and you may see a little bit of light coming in as we move forward through this hour and a half that we have together. Hopefully, but it is a very dark time of the year here. I'll put the screen on and you can look at the PowerPoint instead of looking at my very pale face at the moment. I'll just share here. Excellent. Seem to have worked. So the topic today is special voting arrangements. And I'm going to assume that those of you that are here are either working with this issue. Or actually, I'll just assume that you're working with this issue. Otherwise, why would you be here? It may seem like a bit of a strange topic. I think those of us who are interested in special voting arrangements are very excited about it in a way that may be difficult to understand for outsiders. Until perhaps this year hit. And that's what we'll talk about during this lecture about what makes this year special and why this topic is just rising, rising in interest beyond the small group that many of you represent. And it's really, I guess, when I think about this topic, I think of it really as where are we going with our elections? What happens next? What is the new frontier? And how are we going to navigate it? So I see this topic from that lens. And what I'm hoping is that you won't mind, although in my paper I anchored it in many examples and so forth and the paper is available for you. And perhaps Adi can put in the notes a reminder of where that is. And I'll also say that on the International Idea websites, and I think Adi will put a link to where we have many, many, many case studies about special voting arrangements and about COVID-19 elections. So we have a lot of rich, rich data there, a lot of examples. But I want to focus on this big picture. What issues has this brought up this topic? And what are we grappling with? What do we need to know to take forward? And I was kind of hoping that I could use you all because I happen to see in the participants group a number of people who have very, very deep knowledge on these topics. So I wanted to use this lecture, not so much as me telling, but me putting out some propositions and then testing them on you. And then if we could use the discussion section to get feedback. And the reason I'm doing this is because I'm noticing that what's arising in one part of the world, and that International Idea works globally. So we work with election authorities or with regulatory agencies or non-governmental organizations or observation groups in all parts of the world. And what arises in one part of the world as an absolute truism is sometimes the opposite somewhere else. And so just testing. So I had a webinar in Brazil the other day, and that was very, very interesting, the topics that arose there. And then in Portugal, just the other day, and now being here with you and just kind of this circular, circumnavigating the globe to just pick up what is on people's minds is really, really important for us to build a holistic picture. So I will use you, the audience for that today. All right, so just so we're all clear on what we're talking about with special loading arrangements. And it's actually not even clear to us who are working with it. So that's part of what I'm going to test with you today. But just to give a little bit of a hint in case there. Sorry, I'll just figure out how to. Next one. There we go. This is just a hint of what we're talking about. But I think we're coming to a consensus that it is the type of arrangements that you make in addition to the traditional polling station on Election Day. So usually it will have to do with ways of reaching voters that aren't able to come on Election Day or that for convenience reasons don't. And so other arrangements are made and it's it could be time issue that is they are not available on Election Day. And so much of advanced voting is about accommodating that. Or it's about physicality, not physically being able to arrive at the polling station or not wanting to. And so other modalities are dealing with that people who are outside the polling station. So that's basically the range, but within that range are a lot of complications as those of you who are working with this know. And the complications are. Are really what are going is going to frame this this discussion as we move forward. And I'm calling it our special voting arrangements journey. Sorry about the acronym, the SBA, but that's just the short words to describe this whole set of issues that we're dealing with. I'm calling it our journey because it's it's your journey that you are on right now in your work. But it's also our journey and international idea. And many of you are either member states or our dear friends that we work with. So you are with us on this journey. And we're in a discovery mode and. And this discovery mode is is framed by the two tensions that are part of the subtitle of this lecture, which is this idea that. Yes, it is so important to include all voters thing we must find a way for everyone to be involved. This this must be our top priority and especially in a year like this. But on the other hand. Every way that we try to accommodate people outside the polling station brings a whole set of difficulties that can actually be the Achilles heel of the election. Or even bring down the election. In case there's accusations of voter fraud, for example, so each one of these alternatives brings a set of risks and vulnerabilities. That we need to balance against that participation. So that is the broad framing of the lecture, but the way that we'll do it. Just this is the storyboard that we will walk through is to think of this year in particular. What is the watershed? What what makes 2020 special? Why will things be different afterwards than they were before? What is it about this moment? And in that sense, there's two big things at least for us that have marked this year. And that is the pandemic. The reason we're speaking of this by this means and not in a conference room. And for us very much the US elections and I'll tell you a little bit why I think the US elections in particular are important for us to learn from this year. But also I want to have a discussion with you about our assumptions about special voting arrangements and even why they're special. And at what point is normal is special normal and and things that are special in some places might be more than another. So how are we going to navigate a global conversation on these issues to keep kind of keep bringing everybody to the to the same level. We're struggling with this and I will share our struggles with you and ask for your feedback. And then I'm going to test some understandings that are emerging about from what we are learning from all of the introducing of special voting arrangements that have occurred this year. And and even those that we follow before we've been following these very, very closely. But it's a complicated picture and I'll need your help. I'll test what we're learning on you, but I'll need your help to see if it resonates if it resonates with your situation, or if it's understandable the way that we presented. So that's the idea of the way that we'll move forward. So let's start with this crazy year 2020. All right. Many of you will recognize elements of this picture. These are pictures from Korea, which has been really leading the way and how we think about holding elections in a pandemic. And really, if we'd looked at these pictures two years ago, we would have thought it was a science fiction movie. And now it is our reality. And what we've seen is an acceleration of trends that were underway. And that's where special voting arrangements really, really fits. But in a condensed time period that no one could ever have imagined. So think of Bavaria introducing all male voting in two weeks, just two weeks to introduce to move from polling stations to postal ballots. And Korea is an example of that as well, just moving so fast to introduce the health measures that you can see here, the hygiene, the personal protective equipment. And it's this condensed period that makes 2020 so interesting. The fact that everybody had to move so fast tested every aspect, every dimension of these organizations. I'll just, if I have a slide a little bit later on, that's calling this the stress test for elections. And I don't know how many of you have visited a car factory. But there are car factories certainly in Germany, where they pick up every 20th car in the testing phase in the factory phase, and they pick it up and they shake it really, really, really, really hard for I think a minute or so. And when they shake it, they can see which little bits are falling out, which little bits are not working as well as they should. And I would say that these pandemic elections have been the equivalent of that for election authorities worldwide. And it's, it's tested their resilience their ability to change procedures quickly, and very much tested their ability to cooperate with other agencies ones that they had no previous relationship in this case. Who would have known as an election authority that you'd be dealing with the health authorities. But that is a trend that we were already seeing in areas like cybersecurity, that it was not possible to deal with the threats to elections without a strong culture of interagency cooperation. And so that's one of those learnings that we're seeing this year. And we can see it because it's such a condensed period of time, something that would normally have developed over over years in preparation for an election is now happening in a matter of weeks. I just want to remind ourselves that this is just a slide that I took from Adi and together with this one. And that is that these arrangements that are being turbocharged in 2020 are actually part of a trend that was already underway. And that's the only reason I'm showing you these slides is that you've probably seen them in various workshops with Adi and others over the past years. And out of this is OCD means out of country voting, but it's the fact that the in some ways the traditional polling station model isn't holding for a variety of groups and out of country people are people who out of country is one example. And these dilemmas that the pandemic is bringing reminds us of these dilemmas that we had much more time to think about, but is how do we reach people who aren't immediately available in the community. So that the only reason I'm showing you these slides then is just to say that the the interesting thing about the pandemic has been the acceleration. Many of the trends were already underway and special voting arrangements trying to find ways of reaching people through other means is one of them. And of course we can also mention that not only out of country but also out of district so we imagine places like Malaysia for instance with great urbanization where the electoral authorities and some of you I hope are here or or legislators are thinking carefully about how do we reach university students or people who are in the city to efficiently make sure that their poll is that their voters counted. So these these dynamics of trying to figure out how to accommodate voters in a changing society is is just part of our reality now turbocharged with this. And one more thing I'd like to mention is the expectation of voters, this kind of convenience expectation. And this is something to keep in mind in terms of the 2020 watershed is that the special measures that we introduced this year for the pandemic. They may be difficult to retract later on and so they may be becoming or they may well be becoming part of our normal. We imagine for example, that special voting arrangements that were formally only for a small group of people who had a particular reason. Now in many jurisdictions, many countries and many states and many cities for this year that was extended to the whole population. Now will it be possible to bring it back again. And what implications does that have for cost and for how we organize elections in the future. So my basic point is these trends were already underway accelerated this year. And what's going to happen after this with what do we keep what do we go back to is there any going back to before. And this is just a quick slide that shows trends in in Europe. And my reason for showing these slides we've been working intensely with in Europe on various forms of special voting arrangements. And we're really noticing as you can see from from just these these maps that there's often some cultural context involved in terms of what's acceptable in one place or another. And there's also infrastructure issues where something that is super easy in one place is more difficult in another place. And this is just to flag that there is no one size fits all, but it's also to flag that we are learning from each other. So in this map will change as those in the blue field, for example, in the various maps are learning from those in the orange fields in these maps. And there's a lot of cross-border learning just as this is very much the case in Asia in the Pacific. And I just wanted to show you that that dialogue is going on in other parts of the world as well. So here my point is just that these trends, as I said before, they were underway, they are accelerated, but they will look different in different places. And that's kind of OK for reasons that will go through. So what do we mean? Why? Okay, sorry, that was just distracted by the chat, but I'll try not to be distracted. We can look at that a little bit later. And anybody else is welcome to answer. So the reasons for introducing special voting arrangements and before the pandemic they always existed. And they're listed here and the number three is certainly the one we're thinking about this year, but it was always and I'm just giving you this list for due diligence. So we're all on the same page, but also if you could just remind us if there's something that we're missing, because we're working towards a primer or a handbook. And so I'm testing some of these out on you and if you could just let me know either in the chat or afterwards in the discussion what we're missing. So we're thinking it's people who are away. As I was saying before or abroad, official duty is a very important category. And that's one where that the official duty one has really been the forerunner for special voting arrangements. It's always the one that's come come first. For example, in the UK was already in the 1940s. That postal voting was brought in for the military and then stayed after that and is now available to the general population. Conflict insecurity sometimes has has an impact. We can see that in some parts of South Asia, for example, where certain areas are affected. Incarceration that it means people who are in prison or not able to to leave where they are. And they're not on the voters list. This is the case for for certain temporary measures where you provisional balance. And then voter convenience is one that's really, really on the rise. So do let us know if this this list is missing anything. And here I want to test the proposition. And and that is the way we're thinking of framing this and does this ring true for you. And that is the reason we're using the word special is because we still believe that the ordinary. The one you see on the picture the polling station is the gold standard. And it's a gold standard for for many reasons. And the most important one perhaps is the fact that it's a controlled environment. And that speaks to the integrity part of this dilemma. It is a controlled environment where there is a proximity. It's very close. The voter, the checking that the voter is eligible, the seeing that the voter is the voter, the voter receiving a ballot paper, often in visible to to political party monitors, candidate monitors, or to observers, or to the general public sometimes. And it's visible that they go behind the polling booth, and then that they come out and they put it in the ballot box. That is a tried and tested way. Thanks to all of you in Australia for for having perfected it 100 years ago and shared it with the rest of the world. But and so all of these other arrangements are moving back from this gold standard. And before I move away from this idea of the polling station as a gold standard, because it may be that we are being nostalgic and anachronistic when we are too attached to the polling station. But I'm thinking that we don't want to lose this attachment just yet. And that's also for the other reason. And that is this almost. Maybe I'm going too far. But if I say almost sacred ritual of walking down to that station and and and meeting your neighbors and and performing that civic duty. And this was described very well in a lovely book, which I can highly recommend called Ritual and Rhythm and Electrical Systems by Professor Graham Orr. And he talks about the election, the polling place as as a ritual that is important for us as citizens to feel a part of our country. So when we move to convenience, let's also keep that in mind is what are we losing. And I think we all know that it's a losing battle that this whole station is we are moving away from it. But I just want to have your insights to where we are on the spectrum to how quickly we can move away from from from the polling station. Or is it the case that we can say the polling station is the main one and then these other forms of special voting arrangements are supplementary. That's where we're leaning at the moment, but I'm very interested to hear your thoughts. So I was saying that this was the ultimate stress test for for elections, and that was because the polling station, which is the place where most electoral authorities put the procedures are written for polling stations. The materials are developed for polling stations, the civic education is developed for polling stations, and yet it was precisely polling stations where you could not be. You did not want to gather people in one place, and that's what polling stations do. So almost, you know, there's a few sectors who have been hit really, really hard and we feel for the the culture sector, the theaters and music and so forth. But elections have really, really had it tough this this this year. And we've learned from each other. And I just want to again highlight this this when things move quickly, the importance of learning from each other. And I think that's where international ideas Asian Pacific team are doing such a lovely job of just facilitating that conversation. When you're curious about introducing something, and then you have the opportunity in a very safe environment to just explore that. And we noticed that the Korean example really resonated throughout the world. Now in Korea, they expanded their early voting, they extended postal voting, and they considered other things but couldn't bring them through. But their measures plus the the hygiene measures as I showed you before. The case study that you can see here that was written by one of our colleagues in the Asian Pacific Office, Antonio Spinelli. That went viral. And we had calls from from Canada and other parts of the world saying how do we learn so this this learning we see this cascade learning going on. And I think that's one of the. If I think of 2020 as a watershed moment, I've already mentioned a number of things, but I just want to put this one in the mix, the importance of peer learning. And the importance of peer learning is why I think the US elections in particular so important there are many important elections this year. For many, many different reasons, whether it's Hong Kong or Brazil or Myanmar or many important ones. But from a special voting arrangements point of view, I think the US is the most interesting. It is the most interesting because it is so decentralized, which is a very odd thing for many of us who have centralized authorities and believe in centralized authorities. But it means that there's an experimentation going on. In a way, as they are dealing with how this issue is playing out, these special voting arrangements, as you will have noticed anybody who's watching this cannot have missed it. They are becoming infected polarized. This issue of postal voting is being given the equivalence of voter fraud. As one example of how an issue that seems like an administrative issue is turning into a political issue. We're noticing that it's a societal issue. As the discussions in the United States about who are the most vulnerable who are the most vulnerable to COVID to to COVID to the COVID virus, but who is also who are the most disenfranchised. This discussion about the disenfranchised and the vulnerable is underway. And the other thing that's interesting about the United States at the moment is the amount of litigation, the amount of testing in court, the measures that are being introduced. And so let's watch this space very, very closely. I think we will see many, many difficulties for the authorities that are involved. But I'm imagining that we will also see innovation that will affect the way that voting is done globally after after this. So let's let's watch this space. All right. So I've given you a sense that 2020 was very important. And so now I just want to move forward to how we're trying to consolidate this. And here's where I'm going to really, really need your help. First one is definitions. I've tried to explain why we picked special, but this shows that we could have picked many, many other words. And we could have picked alternative convenience, exceptional or unconventional. And we've landed on special for the reasons that I outlined, but I just want to check with you if you feel that that holds. So the idea is polling station as your gold standard. But these things that are being introduced are we're treating them as special because they are not in that controlled environment. And so we need to pay special attention to them. So even if they become normal, they will still need special attention. I hope that kind of justifies it. Really, all could be fine, but we're going with this one. And then this idea of whether it was arrangements or measures and so forth. Now, I would actually use different words depending on which ones. I would probably use measures when I think of which measures are going to be put in place in this pandemic, for instance. But he and so what we do tend to use these other words as well in text. But we're sticking with the arrangements because of our natural affinity with election management bodies. That is our, at least in our team, the team that you're with now is this those who actually have to put the arrangements in place. So that's that's what we're playing with right now. And I'm really interested in your thoughts. And this is the full list that we're thinking of at the moment. I won't read it up, but I'll just just let you read it for a few just to let you read it through. And if you notice anything that's missing. And I can see that Michael Maley, one of our participants is actively using the chat function that is excellence. I encourage you all to use it. We will be taking note of everything that's in there. So in case you don't have time to say it, we'll use the chat function. But what have we missed? What have we categorized wrongly? Grateful for your thoughts. And if there's any issue of what these mean, perhaps language issues that because these are in English, and it may not be everybody's first language. Some are obvious, but just that proxy voting, I'll just explain that's when somebody else votes for someone. For example, an elderly person may send their carer and put the ballot through that person. And provisional was what I was mentioning before about if you're not on the voters list that you get something that's temporary, or perhaps if you're not in your constituency, you get a ballot that's in an extra ballot. So those are the ones we've come up with, but it's been real challenge. This is going to be hard to read, but I just want to show it to you as the way that we're thinking right now. So what we're thinking is that what type of special voting arrangements you're going to put in place will really depend on who you are trying to help. So that's our idea for how we will frame this issue moving forward. Oh, thanks, Michael, for the extra ones. That's great. Michael merely just put some extra categories for us. And I'll just show you what this would look like filled in. So this would be different then for different jurisdictions and which show that there's no one size fit all, but it depends on who you are trying to target. And so our suggestion is then that we could fill in this one in a way such as this one. So here we are matching, for example, health related needs, but that's a good match with the mobile ballot box and bringing it to homes or old age homes and so forth. So this is our broad thinking of how we will frame this. I'll just leave it up for just a moment in case this is helpful for your own thinking of what you have on your menu at the moment or where you might be heading. And here also, if we've gotten something wrong or misunderstood something. So that's our thinking at the moment. And as to final points, so we can get the discussion going because I'm guessing that I'm using up my time very, very rapidly. I've way used up my time. Okay, these are my final two points are the do's and the don'ts sections. And let me just remember them written down. Otherwise, I will just. Okay, the vulnerabilities and the risks and the unintended consequences are really showing themselves this year. We just have to look at the mobs shouting voter fraud, voter fraud, it sends chills down any election authority or any legislators. To imagine that something that you've introduced will be seen in that way it is. There are, it's just shown the amount of controversy around, if we think of already in earlier this year in Poland, the idea to move to all postal voting was highly controversial. Whereas in other parts of the world and in the United States, when authorities didn't move to postal voting that was highly controversial. So just to show that the risks around this topic are many. And the risks come from this tension that we that is framing this this topic is that the more you move towards participation, the less control you have, you cannot guarantee the secrecy. You have your opening to vulnerabilities. Every changing of hands of these, whether it's the ballot boxes that are outside brings with it some risks, and even even even advanced voting, which is really quite in a controlled form. But perhaps it doesn't have the observation, for example, that a polling station voting does. So is that okay? What tolerance is there in society for accepting those risks to get those participation dividends? That is the societal conversation that has to happen. So here's what I'm saying. There are risks. There are unintended consequences. And all of these special voting arrangements have inherent vulnerabilities to them. But the flip side is each of them enables a part of the population that otherwise wouldn't vote. That's a real good thing that we need to work towards. So how do we mitigate those risks or accept them? And what we're learning just before I move away from this because I'm going to say what we're learning that helps with that is I just want to remind of one thing which isn't to do with being controversial. But just that each one brings cost and administration implications. Once you introduce a new type of voting, it's difficult to bring it back. So I know that many are under pressure with the cost of elections. So each one of these will build it. So that's part of the societal conversation too is what appetite do we have to pay for these and to organize them properly, which takes resources. So if there is a political push to introduce, for example, postal voting more widely or smartphone voting, whatever it is, there needs to be also the resources that come with it. If there is that societal will. So here I come right to the end, which is one of the lessons that we're learning is we've always known it. Here's the electoral cycle that you recognize, but it's that in this compressed time period, there wasn't the time to go through this full cycle. So we have to make sure that whatever was done this year was temporary and anything in the future goes through the full cycle because there's a lot of corners that have been cut and that will bite us in the behind later on. So just to keep in mind the elect that any of these arrangements need to go through the full electoral cycle and preferably several cycles. So I'm going to end with what was written also in the paper. And I'm really, really testing here now. But if we look at those who have managed well, and many have, we have seen a resilience and a resourcefulness and a cooperation that has been absolutely extraordinary and beautiful to watch. And here's the three things that I'm picking out, but maybe there's more and maybe there's a different way of framing them. And one is that we cannot lose sight of the technical aspects. These small procedural details, we're seeing them play out now on, for example, envelopes in New York, for instance, where signatures go, how something goes back. These transfers, the forms that accompany something throughout every stage, these procedural details matter. And so even though these are being discussed at the political level, we mustn't forget that it is these details and procedures that can make the difference in terms of the integrity dimension. Secondly, the importance that the rules and the reasoning why something has been chosen is clearly known and that the how it's going to work is clearly laid out. And sometimes things have gone so fast now and there's been a confusion about how something is going to work. So just that the rules, whatever they are, are clear and absolutely laid out. And thirdly, and this is going to be the most important one, is this sense of shared purpose. Those who have navigated well this year have been able to ally the general sense of the population, what needs to happen, whether it's to postpone elections, as was the case in France, those second round of local elections. It was a general sense that it needed to be postponed. And the legislators, they worked so hard to change the laws to enable that postponement, which was societally needed. And the political parties also gave their support to that. So when there was an alignment between the agencies, the health agencies, the electoral agencies, the legislators needed to push something through. And the political parties not playing silly games with these but actually standing behind it. That's when things went well. And I think that's the lesson that we need to take moving forward as we introduce special voting arrangements in the future. So as we move to the discussion now, I just want to say that I'm not the expert who can answer everybody's questions, but the experts are amongst you, the participants. So while I'll let Lena guide us, I would like any questions to be to all of us, really, and that we together navigated. And I'm also very keen for your feedback on this framing that we have right now. Thank you so much. Thank you so very much, Therese, for that very wonderful overview and also putting forward those questions. Yeah, this is truly the whole topic of 2020. And as you rightly say, we are only halfway of the journey of finding these answers. There are so many unknowns and probably many aspects that we haven't really yet thought about or at least don't know how they will work in practice. So I also encourage you to put forward your questions through chat box and either put it to everyone if you want everyone to see them or if not, at least all panelists. So I can see them and this and myself can see them and I can convey the questions forward. And as mentioned, we're very keen on hearing your experiences as well or your reflections and thoughts. We thought we should start with the poll since Therese brought up this question of the concept. What should we call the special voting arrangements or something else? So we do have a quick poll question there. Which term do you think is most appropriate? A, special voting arrangements or B, alternative voting methods? Obviously, we could have put C something else, but it's hard to put that into a quiz like that. So again, please feel free to use the chat box and propose a third option if neither of these you think is the really accurate one. And as we know, it will take some time before the concepts stick, so to speak. So we will probably know within a few years time which one the world will start using. So here we have our results. There seems to be a slight preference for the alternative voting methods. It's close call. There is six out of 13. It's saying special voting arrangements and seven voting for alternative voting methods. I know Therese that you were one of those people who were once upon a time reflecting about how do we call all these institutions that organize elections, ministries and commissions and whatnot. And eventually we all call them, most of us call them EMBs, electoral management bodies. But it didn't fall from the sky. It was also a product for intense discussions and debates. And I believe this one will be as well. Do you want to comment on these results in any way before we go to the questions? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we'll think about it. Yeah, this is really fun. And you should see the internal traffic in our internal emails as well as we go back and forward. And we've also done, we did a Google search as well to see which terms were coming up. So it took us a while to land on special voting arrangements, but we're still, we may use alternatively. And I should say that ODIR, a wonderful organization that we cooperate greatly with in Europe, the OSCE ODIR, they have chosen alternative voting methods. So we'll take this into consideration. Thank you. We're still out on that one. On terminology, I think just your point is right, Lena. I've been 28 years now working with elections and some of you I see in the participants have been even longer. And it takes a while for sometimes a term to get sticky. And then once it gets sticks, it really sticks even if it's not the best term. And I think EMB is an example of that. And I feel a bit guilty about that one. But it's just, we were organizing a big conference and couldn't find the word that checked both commissions in, but also the small administrative unit, which in Sweden at the time was the tax department, a small unit inside the tax department. That was that was organizing elections. And like, how did you put that in the same as like the Indian Election Commission, which was such an important agency. And that's where we came to the term electoral management bodies. Good. That, that debate, I'm sure, continues. We're probably moving on to some of the questions and comments. There is a couple related to postal voting and particularly comment that cobalt-civacoti and few others that there are, it is becoming more and more accepted process, postal votes and established in many countries. But then again, in some places, those ballots really are printed at the last hour. So, leaving no time for postal exchange, any advice on that. And there was one that related to very first question regarding, I guess this is one of those declarations that you need to attach to your. And someone explain what does it mean when you have to say sworn declaration from the postal vote to saying that the vote has been cast in person, unobserved and unaffected, and the vote has been cast in secret. For this one, can I, can I suggest that Michael Maley, who's here, tells about how the debate was in Australia and what it took, the steps that it took to introduce postal voting and why these choices were made. I think that that case would, and also how many years it took, like what steps, because this is really complex, these are complicated issues that can't be treated lightly. And so, would Michael be up for anything? Michael? I don't know if you can hear me because I haven't switched the microphone on. You can hold it. Okay, there's a long history of postal voting in Australia going back to about 1911. In its early form, it was limited to very restricted classes of people, and it was subject to a witnessing requirement, which limited the witness of the postal voting process to again a limited class of public offices. Which meant that they were responsible for ensuring that the postal vote was cast in circumstances as required by the law, in other words, secretly, without under-oppression, that sort of thing. And the witness became ultimately an extension of the election administration. That was the case pretty much up until the 1960s, where the class of people who could be witnesses was greatly expanded. And by 1990, the law had again been amended so that there was no longer any sort of obligation on the witness to ensure that the law was being complied with during the act of postal voting. At the same time, and in parallel, there were developments in the details of how postal votes could be applied for, which made it much easier for someone to get a postal vote. In a sense, in essence, they didn't have to specify a particular reason. They simply had to assert that they were qualified for a postal vote. So it has transitioned in the last 100 years or so from being an exceptional arrangement, quite precisely implemented, to being just another alternative voting modality, which people can choose if they want. You can now, at a federal election in Australia, apply for a postal vote over the internet, and it's an extremely simple straightforward process, which, in fact, I used at the recent economic narrow by election. So there's been that sort of evolution. And the concern I think that some of us would have is that forgotten in a lot of this is the role of the polling station as a state guaranteed place where a person can vote without being subject to any pressure. A lot of the debate in America seems to be about whether postal ballots can be interfered with after they've been cast, you know, grabbed by party officials or otherwise misdirected by the postal service or whatever. But the great concern from my point of view is that people who are voting by post aren't being given the advantage which people have had a polling booth of being protected by the polling officials from any attempts to subject them to undue influence. And as Sarah Birch has pointed out in quite a lot of detail in her publications on internet voting, family pressures can be really quite significant, particularly in a highly polarized election such as being seen in the USA, but also as it's seen in many countries. The sort of family pressures that people might be susceptible to when they're marking their ballots around the dining room table is distinct from in a voting compartment is not something that should be forgotten. And you know, I wrote about this in our paper last year in the Journal of Democracy. Right. And Pak Hadar, are you here with us? I'm just wondering, I thought I saw Pak Hadar in the, I hate to put him on the spot. We can, we'll call him after a while if he is around. If you, because I think this issue of, or if anybody else's would like to speak from Indonesia or Malaysia, but yeah, go ahead. Is that Pak Hadar? No. But it just the Malaysian or Indonesian experiences of out of country voting with postal voting would be really interesting to hear from as well as how they're navigating that. Hi Teresa and Lena. Yes, I am here. You've had lots of experience over the years with trying to figure out how to deal with those. No, no. Yeah. In fact, we are the Indonesian that like to learn from you that have been observing the oil election in this very unfortunate time of pandemic. So, yeah, we are facing a quite difficult situation here because very soon in December 9, there will be a local election, which is quite a big one. It's half of the country in fact, you know, basically over 100 million voter expecting to involve in this. So, but the decision already made by the authorities, which is now is not only the EMB, but also government and the parliament. Civil society and in fact, most of the public through the surveys, many surveys shows that they worried about having it in this coming December. Because actually there is no what you call it special voting procedure, which I think it should be an alternative. Sorry. Alternative procedures. But anyway, there is there is no such a thing introduced in Indonesia. So, so we are worried, but anyway, it looks like they will continue. And for one reason, it's there is no one can say when is the pandemic me will be over. And secondly, they say it will ruin the democracy itself because there is the term of this head of the regionals will be finished very soon. So we need to have a new one. So that's becoming their second big reason why to do it in this coming December. But anyway, so just the protocol health protocol against the profit, you will be implemented. That's what they plan, which I think are many Indonesian friends will see we the public is not very disciplined to do to do so. You know, wearing the mask and keeping the distance physical distance and so on. But anyway, they believe this could could be could be applied. So anyway, the question that I have is to you actually about using a technology. Instantly, the response of the public think using technology by Internet voting, for example, this is the chance to do it. This is the option that should we use it because they think a lot of us using technology now. But as the information here, none of this being prepared actually. So I just wonder whether during this pandemic, the practice in many other countries. Is this also an issue that, you know, a lot of public will say, OK, why don't we use this Internet voting, for example? Is that the also the debate? It said, you know, you're a have been observing in many countries. I personally think it's not because, you know, this is more complex. And we have to prepare it, you know, very well. But Indonesia haven't done that. So what we have in mind is what you have been presenting those special voting arrangement like postal votes, early voting and so on. But then the authority think we just go on with what we have, you know, the conventional one going to polling stations. And so it will be like that. So that's the situation. Lena and Trace and everyone in the forum in Indonesia. Thank you. Thank you for that account. And I think that that really actually links with the question or comment question that we have from Sofia Martinez de Castro. So from Mexico, who is wondering about this, how do you go about selecting the special voting arrangements that really would meet specific population or the society and making sure it doesn't impact the cost by voters and that could affect them the whole election. I think that's that's really what we're coming into is this how do we best build trust on these new systems? I suppose we all would agree that it takes time and positive experience. But what else? What are the what are the ingredients for the EMBs or the electoral authorities to build trust on these new new type of systems and to introduce them? I guess the first word that comes to mind is pilots, pilots, pilots, pilots. And for that, I'm wondering, you've just had the elections in Canberra where you are. And I see that that Jiv is on the line or any others from the the Canberra office because I think this issue of pilots or introducing something. I really see Canberra as a leader in the just the way that it rolls out something in lock in together with the people and the politicians and not too much in advance and not too much behind. It feels like it's hitting the sweet spot. Maybe it's just me from the outside, but that's what it looks like. But you just experienced it right now. And I'm wondering if Jiv would be willing to respond to that Mexican question from the perspective of what you've just been through with experimenting with technology in the polling stations. For instance, would you be up for speaking or anyone from the Canberra office? The ACT office, sorry. Sure. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry to put you on the spot. No, it's okay. Sort of not sure where to start, but I think I guess in terms of this this election, I suppose we had, I guess our commission, we've been trying to advance a few things ahead of COVID in any case in terms of I guess new new products or services that we're trying to roll out. I think with COVID, I think it probably just accelerated that. I'm thinking particularly about, I suppose, electronic online voting service for overseas electors based on the ACT. That's probably something that we were trying to roll out. Well, it was something we were trying to roll out prior to COVID anyway. Just with the sort of slow down in postal vote processing, particularly with respect to getting postal votes back from most of these locations and so on. So I think that was planned anyway. It just sort of fortuitous that this sort of happened and postal vote delivery time frames are slowed down even further than kind of what we thought originally. So that little part can be more significant than kind of what we thought. So I think, you know, there's always, I guess, things that we're trying to do here because we're a smaller jurisdiction and because we've got this sort of technological capacity to do it on a smaller scale where we can try to do things like that. But certainly, I think this election sort of gave us even more reason to do that. Specifically, we're relaxing the elevating restrictions with pushing elevating much more and much more larger numbers with enhancing electronic voting in the prequel scenario. I think that's it all enabled us to do that in a way that probably was fortuitous. And it was, well, you know, certainly mandated by the requirements of just dealing with a COVID safe election. But I think we were sort of generally heading towards some of these services in any case and sort of spent things up a bit and sort of tested them in a way that probably we weren't expecting. So it's a difficult election in many fronts. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for that. And indeed we had also a comment here from Debra Taylor as well pilots, but also co-designed and user testing, including people who are blind with limited literacy. And her comment already earlier was also when there was Therese, you asked the question if all the groups were included people with disabilities who would not be able to attend in-person voting. And I guess the one group, another group might be the migrant workers in a sense that obviously there was a group of people who are abroad, but you may be abroad for so many different reasons. And often it is not that much voluntary when you are. And often that group, embassy voting may not be an option. You may need to find the ways come much closer to the people wherever they are working. Lena, on that, are there any participants who have experience with the migrant workers issue? Because I know that has been in the United States right now they're talking about this idea of ballot harvesting. That is when a group is somewhat coherent and where you have, you know, where someone may have leverage over a whole group. This speaks to Michael Maley's early point too about family voting, but there's, you know, around the table. But a family that's tough on the individual, but it's still only four or five people. But once you start talking about a, you know, a plantation or a military unit or something, like how do you navigate the personal, you know, the individuals. And I'm just wondering if any of the participants have any experience about how to break any kind of maybe cultural issues around or power issues that might affect the secrecy of the vote for migrant workers, for example. It's a tough question. Yeah, yeah, there is maybe we'll see if someone wants to talk about it. But what I know for sure is that Myanmar elections up and coming now November 8. And was initial thoughts that the Myanmar EMB asked collaboration of the Thailand EMB to organize the voting for the migrant workers on the border of Thailand and Myanmar. So that the people don't have to come to Bangkok and to the embassy, which would be sort of very hard for these people to do, but it would be organized somewhere near the border. Now with COVID situation that plan needed to be supported, but that was something that they were really trying to think about. Actually, there was also a comment here earlier from the BNG that indeed not always the in person polling day is necessarily a gold standard if when the polling stations are so remote and that we do need to think about the SBAs also for these groups. I was asking Adi that maybe this would be a good moment to do the second quick poll and see do we think proxy voting violates the principle of secrecy? Yes, or no, or don't know. This relates to the question issues that we just discussed about voting around a kitchen table or any other pressures that people may feel or letting someone else to know what your views are or even risking that the other person decides for you for that matter. Then again, there are times you may you are not able to be in person and you would like to use the opportunity for proxy voting. So, while you're asking, I have two more. I have another question. If there's anyone from the Philippines and no need to speak it out here, but I'm really interested about the experiment that was done with Filipino sailors with smartphone voting and just how that went. So, if anybody has, I think I saw someone from the Philippines, so if anybody has any intel on that, we'd love to know how that worked out. Speaking to Hadar's point earlier that people are going to start to expect to be able to vote on their phones and so it's always interesting to watch those first experiments and I know the Philippines are leading on that. Indeed. Do share that through the chat or ask for the floor. Very happy to hear from you in person or then even afterwards send us a message. So interesting majority seems to think that indeed proxy voting violates secrecy. 12 votes and a lot of saying no and she don't know. It's very interesting given that the proxy voting is a method that is in the toolbox of voting methods if there is quite a bit. Yeah, and here we come to the the appetite for risk or trust issues, which is, yeah, probably does compromise secrecy. I think we'd all have to agree with that. You know, anything that is somebody on their kitchen table and giving it to someone else and somebody carrying it is going to compromise secrecy. But is it worth it. And that's where the trade offs like is it worth it. And this idea that you err on the side of inclusion. But this this idea which I think many of us really appreciate the error on the side of inclusion if in doubt included if if a ballot might be valid might be invalid if it's in doubt included because it would be worse that they didn't get counted. That's only possible in a high trust environment where everybody's like, yeah, that's what we'll do. The minute you get that switches to a very tense environment, the opposite dynamics occur. And that's where you really can't take any risks because the smallest thing that goes wrong in, for example, something like proxy voting will be the thing that shows up on social media or something as an example of something that is a disaster and shows that the whole elections are fraudulent. And that's where these extra kind things that are put in place to make it easier for someone suddenly become your real Achilles heel. It becomes the entry point for some some real toxins and I've just seen it again and again where it's that. I had the great pleasure of working in Tunisia for one of the elections, and they did such a good job. But they had embassy polling that was really, really difficult. It's it's hard for for an embassy. They're not structured. They're not a polling station. They're not poll workers. And so it's, you know, somebody on social media posted something that wasn't perfect. And suddenly that became the news item. And so it's an example about how that little extra thing suddenly becomes the story when it was introduced as a measure to include participation. And so the point being that when things are tense, when they're highly politicized, things that would be really natural and normal to include suddenly have to think twice and three times. How is this what what might be the damage be the reputational damage if this is if this isn't even if it's done well. If somebody starts a way of thinking about it that that is that undermines it. It's tough. Yeah, indeed. And indeed, while there are many countries that are sort of trying and testing and introducing or accelerating many of these, it seems to be the Indonesian stories more like that, where the EMB would need, would need the extra push or the persuasion to to try. And of course they would they would also need the legal frameworks in place and infrastructures in place. But I, and I don't know how much in Indonesia's case maybe there is that what you referred to today as in your in your talk about the the E day as the right and the ritual of the very act of community coming together. Whether we are in danger of losing any of that while if we are extending the dates and if it becomes one Monday in a fair to do when you are visiting your shopping mall. That's certainly for me and I know then in Australia that's that's something different as as it would be in India and Nepal and in many countries still the E day is the election day. And it carries many meanings. But, but I would imagine in most places we indeed are moving sort of SBAs as complimentary rather than replacing, but. Country sign many in three different. Case on what it comes to that. I see some of the more technical questions here which I can't answer, but I think there are people who can. And also I saw that there's someone from the Victorian Election Commission here and I'm just curious about why social media was picked as something for legislative inquiry was there something particular in mind has something happened. So just just a few I'd love to hear from some more of the participants both to answer some of the more technical questions in the chat section if you think you have the answer. I'd love to hear it as well. And, and also, if this social media and reputation has been a problem in Victoria or any other place any other Australian area or, or, or any of the Asian countries if social media has this this idea of something. The reputation being tarnished of some voting arrangement. Yeah, no. Is to to come forward if you have you have anything. Any advice or. Hi, I do work for the Victorian Electoral Commission. But I work in the education and inclusion team at Deborah Taylor here so I'm probably not the best person to answer you in terms of my colleagues in my comms team would be perfect suit perfectly suited to answer you. I know that social media has, I guess, in terms of listening to community social media is something we need to, to work with to make sure that information is being. You know, I understood and explained across all different demographics in the community, and their platforms that are picking up more and more in terms of being able to get information out across to people so that it would be. I guess it just, it just wouldn't seem right not to use those platforms, I guess. Yeah. I'm sure in terms of more the more technical terminology and everything my colleagues would be better answers. But so Deborah, it's just that I saw that there was an inquiry on this in the Victorian Parliament, I think it was Victorian or selfless. Was it. And so I was just wondering if there was any disinformation problems that have been experienced but but of course social media as a vehicle for for education is you guys do beautiful work. That's. Yeah. The pleasure of seeing that in Melbourne. The extraordinary work that that's that the election commission does down there. Thank you. Yeah, my colleagues would be best suited to answer this. It's all. To see if any of them are here. I'm so sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you for. And indeed, I think we had a couple of questions on this sort of online internet voting and the authentication and techniques and vulnerabilities of servers and all that. So. We probably, if anyone has any, any interesting insights there, but otherwise I would advise really I was listening yesterday. A very interesting presenter from Estonia, which is really the country leading the way on e governance on e voting on e everything. You can be a citizen of Estonia or apply to become one. So, I think they they kind of mastering this. And I know that many countries are still struggling with with the many of the security aspects of this, but. Obviously, somehow with world needs to be and is probably moving to to that direction, but there is a lots of lots of issues and technicalities there involved. We have also just to let you know we are coming the last 10 minutes of our session together so we have opened our. The post lecture survey, which is open and we will be running for 15 minutes or also also after and and when we end, it will be a sort of evaluation survey that will be available. Once we have ended the event. I believe we are sort of running out of the questions from the from the from the audience itself. I'm wondering if I can call on both Adi and maybe Kate Sullivan, if they are up for partly answering some of the questions that are there. These are colleagues that I very much trust on these on these topics. Adi, did you want to speak about the, for example, the the migrant voters issue or else some of the questions that were in the chat. We put Adi on the spot. He's mastering all the our questions and all the polling questions. So I think we have to leave him let him let him do that. Those questions. I think that's the that's exactly the question. Some of the questions looked at issues of early voting. Like how early how early can would you would you vote also in thinking of the ongoing US elections where was it 60 million votes have been already casted. And we still have already we got to before before the elections and some questions came up in one of the yesterday's debates. What if some scandal comes out in this week and then you wouldn't you cannot get your ballot back. But I suppose that's that can happen even after the elections and and you cannot get your vote back in that case either. But these are these are one of those questions how early is too early and. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What point does it start be a stop, you know, does it stop being election. So I think here in Sweden it is really early. It's like. I want to say 40 days, but that's probably too much, but it's really, really, really, really early and it's super convenient. Just on your way home. So more than 40% of Stockholmers use that. And I know that in terms of the answer to Hadar's question about the local elections coming up, the reason I mentioned Kate Sullivan, I thought of her because I know that she's been thinking. And I don't want to speak for you, Kate, so you can speak for yourself. Kate Sullivan is a formerly Australian electoral commission that has now. She she's one of the leading people who understands how the US elections work. So when it comes to learning from the US elections, she's really the right person for that. But she's been thinking, I don't mean if you're ready to speak, you can speak yourself, but that multi day like just extending the time of voting is really the easiest way to accommodate the COVID-19 crisis. It's just the simplest compared to the other methods. I don't know if you want to add anything, Kate. Sure. Good morning. So I can't actually see the questions, but I mean, I think the I think the topic of multi days is a really interesting one and in part to answer. Lane's point I used to work at the UK electoral commission as well and in 2004 we had a lot of all postal voting in some regions of the country where there was only postal vote. And that was also as European parliamentary election and very close to the end of the election period. There was a terrorist attack in Spain, the bombings on the trains in Madrid. And we did some polling as to whether that had changed people's mind in the last week of the election campaign, whether they changed their mind on how they wanted to vote. And therefore whether that impacted because many people had already voted by post by the time the event happened. And in fact, there was a negligible difference people had their own political views already and it wasn't changed by that particular event or by anything else in the campaign that happened after they voted. I mean, I think because because as Michael said that minute you take voting outside of a polling station or a polling location, you've automatically taken away the guarantee of secrecy that the polling station is there to deliver. So certainly I would say that multi day voting answers that problem in that it's it's there's more options for people to vote, particularly in America where it's a weekday voting. It gives people chance multi day voting gives you a chance to vote when you're not at work or when you're not meeting your other obligations. But it still provides that secrecy, but also that assistance because voting outside the polling station is also inaccessible to many groups and societies, particularly people with disabilities. They have no access to assistance if they need it and multi day voting provides all of those things just on more than one day. So I think that you're right that that is the best option and if a society can afford it and can manage it in a safe and secure way, then that's the answer to COVID problems. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Kate. Yeah, and indeed, and of course, this is there is the other other dimension of in many countries to campaign period are very short and actually when you know the names or qualified candidates names very late and that's also sometimes because of the reduced campaign time in order to reduce the influence of money in elections. That was one of the reasons in India in Mongolia. So it's this balancing act between between all these all these different aspects we have. I think we are coming to the end. We have only couple of minutes left. So actually this this topic of we will be hearing in two weeks time in on 11 November, the same time from. About the exactly this issue of of the the impact of the distant and online election campaigning impact on funding of election campaigns and political parties. So tune in on on 11 November 2020. 3 p.m. Australian Daylight Saving Time. And again, there is a request to me to ask you to fill in the post lecture survey. If not already done, it does provide us very valuable, valuable information and they will be a post election evaluation or the sorry, the evaluation survey available once the event has ended. But I do want to thank you. Thank you all for for your questions for for being part of this part of this lecture for also for all the Facebook watchers and everyone who registered through through Webex and everyone who gave the contributions and spoke and particularly of course my warm thanks to Therese for this wonderful lecture and very thought provoking questions and thoughts. And I'm for waking up so currently early in it's getting light outside. I can see I can see there is a little bit of light there outside. And as you said yourself this so many unanswered questions still and many interesting interesting aspects to the special voting arrangements or whatever we want to call them in future. And we are working on this our team in in Stockholm and we in here in Canberra and idea as an institution and many, many of the other organizations are working on this on this issue. So please do send us your thoughts and ideas or experiences. We are very much interested in hearing from you and thank you all the friends of idea who are part of organizing this lecture series and sharing sharing the information through your networks on this. Hope to see you all on 11th November. Thank you again and bye for now.