Freedom of voters to express their wishes and action to combat fraud

a. Voting procedure

i. voting procedures must be readily understandable by voters;
ii. voters should always have the possibility of voting in a polling station. Other means of voting are acceptable under the following conditions (iii-vi);
iii. postal voting should be allowed only where the postal service is safe and reliable; the right to vote using postal votes may be confined to people who are in hospital or imprisoned or to persons with reduced mobility or to electors residing abroad; fraud and intimidation must be ruled out;
iv. electronic voting should be in conformity with Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)5 on standards for e-voting. In particular, it should be used only if it is secure, reliable, efficient, technically robust, open to independent verification and easily accessible to voters; the system must be transparent; unless channels of remote electronic voting are universally accessible, they shall be only an additional and optional means of voting;
v. very strict rules must apply to voting by proxy; the number of proxies a single voter may hold must be limited;
vi. mobile ballot boxes should only be allowed under strict conditions that avoid all risks of fraud;
vii. at least two criteria should be used to assess the accuracy of the outcome of the ballot: the number of votes cast and the number of voting slips placed in the ballot box;
viii. voting slips must not be tampered with or marked in any way by polling station officials;
ix. unused and invalid voting slips must never leave the polling station;
x. the presence of observers appointed by the parties or by other groups that have taken a stand on the issue put to the vote must be permitted during voting and counting;
xi. military personnel should vote at their place of residence whenever possible. Otherwise, it is advisable that they be registered to vote at the polling station nearest to their duty station;
xii. counting should preferably take place in polling stations;
xiii. counting must be transparent. Observers, representatives of the proposal’s supporters and opponents and the media must be allowed to be present. These persons must also have access to the records;
xiv. results must be transmitted to the higher level in an open manner;
xv. electoral fraud must be punished with effective sanctions.

b. Freedom of voters to express their wishes also implies:

i. That the executive must organise all referendums provided for by the legal order;
ii. compliance with the procedural rules; in particular, referendums must be held within the time-limit prescribed by law;
iii. the right to accurate establishment of the result by the body responsible for organising the referendum, in a transparent manner, and formal publication in the official gazette.