2024 is a pivotal year for democracy around the world. Some of the world's largest democracies will be going to the polls this year, while elections everywhere are facing critical challenges. Authoritarians globally are increasingly seeking to gain unfair advantages by restricting political space, disrupting elections, and undermining pre- and post-election processes, while new technologies like artificial intelligence have the potential to harm information integrity. In addition, waning confidence in institutions that manage elections and an increasing trend of denying election results - particularly by losing candidates or parties rejecting election outcomes with bad evidence - is eroding public trust in electoral processes and, in some cases, the end results themselves.

In light of this context, independent, non-partisan citizen election observer organizations stand at the forefront of the struggle to ensure democratic resilience and electoral integrity. Citizen election observers provide impartial information about the electoral process, increasing transparency and ensuring accountability. They help to reduce the potential for violence and engage citizens in their elections. They do this all while maintaining civic space and ensuring the voice of civil society in the electoral process. As democratic institutions fight to regain public confidence and promote transparency, the ability of independent civic actors to provide objective and timely information about elections and verify the credibility of their outcomes is more crucial than ever. Citizen observers do this through a methodology known as Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT).

PRVT, formerly known as PVT or quick count, is a methodology that allows citizen observers to independently verify both election-day processes and results. Using a data-driven approach, observers can accurately evaluate how the overall electoral process impacts the credibility of the results. With the results of a PRVT, citizens can evaluate whether the election process was credible and whether the results reflect the true will of the people. Unlike other methodologies, PRVTs deploy a limited number of observers to a randomly selected sample of polling stations, which reduces organizational burden, increases data quality, and makes data processing more manageable. By assessing voting and counting as well as collecting official results from a statistical sample of polling stations, PRVTs are the only methodology that can independently verify official election results in near real-time. 

For over 30 years, NDI has supported citizen observers in over 90 countries to assist them in employing a variety of methodologies for election observation, most notably the PRVT methodology for election day observation. Having supported nearly 300 PRVTs across the world, NDI has also been at the forefront of helping citizen observers learn from each other and adapt methodologies, strategies, and other practices to their own contexts. 

Based on these decades of experience and lessons from citizen observers around the world, NDI is releasing its fully updated guide to PRVTs. The guide provides definitive and proven approaches to enhance the transparency, inclusivity, and accountability of election day and is designed to empower citizen observer organizations to respond to new electoral challenges and to take advantage of new opportunities to promote electoral integrity.

Since the concept of the PRVT was first developed by the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) in the Philippines in 1986, citizen observers, many of whom, with assistance from NDI, have iterated and innovated the methodology to better respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. Today, citizen observers are leveraging rapid reporting technologies to improve speed and quality, allowing them to get near real-time updates about processes on election day, prioritize strategic communications, and use complementary data to enhance PRVT findings. In 2022, the United Nations Special Rapporteurs for Human Rights Defenders and for the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Association explicitly recognized election observers, in particular nonpartisan citizen observers, as human rights defenders, providing international support and avenues of redress for observers. 

In 2023 alone, PRVTs by nonpartisan citizen observers helped build confidence in the electoral process and verified the election results in the contentious Guatemalan presidential race, exposed clear electoral fraud in the Sierra Leone presidential contest, and provided critical information about both the quality of the electoral process and the subsequent results in Nigeria’s national elections. With the 2024 election season underway, organizations across Africa, the Middle East, Central Europe and Eurasia will also be conducting PRVTs this year to assess the electoral process and results themselves. Civic organizations in Senegal have already relied on systematic monitoring methodologies to boost trust in their recent elections and their outcome.

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Countries in which a PRVT or sample-based observation has taken place

In the face of anti-democratic threats around the world, citizen election observers are uniquely positioned to strengthen electoral integrity and transparency. PRVT serves as a critical tool for empowering citizens to make informed decisions about whether the elections in their countries reflect the will of the people. They build power, credibility, and resilience for nonpartisan civil society organizations, and they reveal the scale and scope of issues in electoral processes. With the right resources and knowledge at their disposal, citizen observers can promote inclusive, transparent, and accountable elections, and foster stronger, more resilient democratic institutions in their communities.

The new guide is available on NDI.org/PRVT in English, and will be available soon in Arabic, French, Spanish and Russian.

Authors: Johandra Delgado, Program Manager for the Election and Political Processes team and Kion Bordbar, Program Associate for the Elections and Political Processes

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NDI is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that works in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms and values to secure a better quality of life for all. NDI envisions a world where democracy and freedom prevail, with dignity for all.