What we have, instead, is an electorate commissioning a body of people to do a job.
The poll, now due on July 30th, has been scaled back: a new president and Congress will be elected on that day, and state governors and assemblies too, but local councils will be elected later in the year.Hoping to work up some enthusiasm among a weary electorate, the new electoral commission, which replaced the one that resigned in disgrace, grandly declared the campaign reopened on July 1st.
Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, president of Burundi's electoral commission, estimated that about 70percentt of the electorate had voted by the early afternoon, but acknowledged lower numbers in the capital.
In a statement issued on Sunday afternoon, the electoral commission said it intended to finalise the count in all electorates immediately after the postal vote cut off at 6pm Tuesday.
On Monday the European Union observer mission called on the electoral commission to publish more detailed results, to "guarantee the support" of the electorate for the eventual announcement.
At the time of writing, the electoral commission is still struggling to get permanent voter cards to more than 15 million registered voters (about 22% of the electorate).
BAGHDAD — Iraq's independent electoral commission on Thursday barred about 500 candidates from running in parliamentary elections in March, among them an influential Sunni Muslim politician, in a decision that could stoke sectarian tensions here and deprive the vote of crucial legitimacy in the eyes of part of the electorate.
In reality, unable to guarantee the safety of his electorate or employees, the commission's head Attahiru Jega had little choice but to postpone the elections.
If Labour came to power between now and March, the only offer it could make, both to the electorate and to the EU commission, would be an off-the-shelf Norway-style deal.
One option would be to explore some form of public "right of recall" where contracted-out services are thought to be of unacceptable quality – say where 3% of the adult electorate has formally petitioned the commissioning authority.
So all of us together, not just those of us here in the European Parliament, but also our electorates, justifiably expect the new Commission to find, within the framework of the priority tasks you have set out, the energy, time and will to deal with its own administrative system, with its own bureaucracy.
