Perceptions of Electoral Integrity: New Report and Dataset

The Electoral Integrity Project has launched the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) Annual Report, ‘Corruption and Coercion: The Year in Elections 2017’, and latest release of the PEI data set (PEI6.0). The new report and data covers 285 elections in 164 countries from July 2012 to December 2017.

Overview
Elections provide the main opportunities for citizens to participate in politics and hold leaders to account.  When they work well, elections can deepen civic engagement, inform public debate, stimulate party competition, facilitate peaceful leadership transitions, hold governments to account, and allow the non-violent resolution of political conflict.

The problem is that too often contests fail to achieve these objectives. There is widespread concern about falling turnout, public disaffection, party polarization, and the failure of elections to ensure legitimate outcomes. Electoral malpractices continue to undermine contests around the world, from overt cases of violence and intimidation to more subtle disinformation campaigns, barriers to fair party competition, and the under-representation of women and minority candidates. Most election results are not rejected outright or overturned but they are commonly flawed.

The new report presents the latest results of the Perception of Electoral Integrity rolling survey drawn from 3,235 experts who evaluated 285 national parliamentary and presidential elections in 164 countries worldwide from July 2012 to December 31 2017. The latest release adds 44 election evaluations for contests held during 2017.

You may download the report and data here.