The international standards and case-law are listed, among others, in the Venice Commission’s Report on election dispute resolution.11 The most relevant norms in the present context are the following:
The general rules of international law on the right to free elections, namely Article 21.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, Article 25 (b) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and – on a European level – Article 3 of the First Additional Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). For the interpretation of the ICCPR, the General Comment No. 25 states that “[t]here should be independent scrutiny of the voting and counting process and access to judicial review or other equivalent process so that electors have confidence in the security of the ballot and the counting of the votes.”12 The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has not applied Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the ECHR to presidential elections.13 This finding does, however, not hinder the Venice Commission to take into account the Court’s jurisprudence on Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 insofar as it is relevant for the understanding of the “right to hold free elections”.
The Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters includes the principles of universal, equal, free, secret and direct suffrage and conditions for implementing these principles, including an effective system of appeal; it states, in particular, that “the appeal body must have authority to annul elections where irregularities may have affected the outcome. It must be possible to annul the entire election or merely the results for one constituency or one polling station. In the event of annulment, a new election must be called in the area concerned.”14
Paragraph 5.10 of the OSCE 1990 Copenhagen Document is also relevant to election dispute resolution as it entitles everyone to “have an effective means of redress against administrative decisions so as to guarantee respect for fundamental rights and ensure legal integrity.”15
