Electoral Violence in Context - A Guidance Document for Citizen Organizations Monitoring Violence in Elections

Election-related violence fundamentally undermines the rights of citizens to freely engage in electoral processes as voters, candidates, election officials, and activists. Political violence in elections subverts the core democratic principles of inclusion and accountability, and can reinforce harmful power structures, increasing harm to groups who are already marginalized. This guide provides a typology of electoral violence organized around three contextual factors for an electoral process including conflict status; the primary perpetrators of election violence; and the phase of the electoral cycle wherein violence is most likely to occur. The guide also provides observers with guidance for conducting a comprehensive political context analysis and recommendations on designing appropriate monitoring methodologies for each broad type of electoral violence, with a cross-cutting focus on social media monitoring, as well as guidance for identifying appropriate response mechanisms. This guidance document builds upon and serves as a complement to previous NDI guidance materials on electoral violence observation, including Monitoring and Mitigating Electoral Violence through Nonpartisan Citizen Election Observation and Votes Without Violence: A Citizen Observer’s Guide to Addressing Violence Against Women in Elections.