Will Adams

B.B. Andersen

William Ballhaus Sr.

Sam Beheshti

Cliff Cohn

Rebecca Cook

Frank X. Henke IV

Bob Holden

John T. Ishiyama

Howard Lay

Michael Norris

Sonia Cornell Yarmat

Submitted 13 November 2005.

First, two points of clarification:

1) The work of this team was in no way sponsored or linked with the government of the United States of America. The team was invited to observe the elections by the Azerbaijan Central Election Commission (CEC) under the auspices of William Jewell College and Webster University, both located in the state of Missouri;

2) The group only witnessed the election process from when the polls opened to when they closed.  We did not witness enough of the counting process to make any definitive judgment regarding the official counting process nor the aggregation of vote totals. Hence, we can only comment on those polling locations where we observed voting taking place. Thus, the report ONLY deals with observations made on election day and NOT the pre-election campaign period (unlike other observation groups such as OSCE –Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe-- which had long term observation teams in Azerbaijan). The group was apparently one of three groups representing western colleges and universities (from both the United States and Europe) that visited Azerbaijan under invitation from the CEC.

Most of the group arrived on Tuesday November 1, 2005, with two additional group members joining on Thursday November 3. After an orientation and meetings with several officials, the teams were dispersed in the field on the day of the election (November 6, 2005). Our group of observers included 12 monitors divided into teams of two (2) persons. Each team was provided with a translator and drivers. The teams tried to concentrate their efforts on electoral constituencies that were considered most competitive by organizations such as Eurasia.net, assuming that in such districts there would the greatest incentive for electoral malfeasance. The selection of which districts to visit was decided entirely by the observation group with NO input from anyone outside of the group. At no time did any official agency nor agent of the Azeri government intervene into the activities of the group nor direct the activities of the two person observer teams. The precincts visited were only determined by each team once they entered the district, and not known ahead of time.

In total, the team covered seventeen (17) constituencies and 52 precincts across the country. Given logistic constraints (distance, time) the team was not able to cover constituencies that were more than 200 kilometers outside of Baku. Nonetheless the team was able to cover constituencies as far north of Baku as Quba-Qusar (constituency 53) as far West as Shamakhi (constituency 85) and as far south as Garadag (constituency 11). Teams appeared at precincts at the opening of polling shortly before 8:00 am. Some of the more competitive constituencies were “saturated” with visits by the team, such as in Constituency 36 where 9 precincts were observed by the teams (at various times during the day) during the balloting. At the close of the balloting, the six teams witnessed parts of the counting procedure. Given the importance of the competition, three teams witnessed parts of the counting process in four precincts in constituency 36. Most of the counting witnessed was orderly and fair, although two observers reported shouting matches among precinct commission members.

Each team was provided with a sheet of “open ended” questions to assist in the evaluation of both the voting process and the counting process. The questionnaire focused on positive and negative aspects of both procedures and asked for (among other things) the objective conditions observed at each precinct, whether problems occurred with the equipment or material (such as voter lists or ballots), whether poll workers were helpful and cooperative in assisting voters, and/or whether intentional errors or misconduct were observed. The observer was given leeway in recording his/her observations, with the intent that their observations would be content analyzed and coded later to produce a more complete report. In addition to the personal observations recorded, the team members also endeavored to interview members of the precinct election commission and the party, candidate, and independent observers who made up the observation groups in each of the election precincts. Further, when available, team members also interviewed exit poll workers.

Although it is FAR TOO EARLY to provide a systematic, complete analysis of the qualitative or quantitative data, there are SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS that can be made. First, there was wide variation in the facilities where polling was conducted. Many were conducted in public buildings such as schools, but also were conducted in cultural centers or theaters. In some cases there were physical constraints on the free movement of voters in and out of the polling stations. These included narrow door way openings, and hard to find polling stations. However, in all cases observed by the team, lists of voters were posted in visible locations, no police or security personnel were within 100 meters of the polling stations (as required by the election code), and poll workers were generally helpful and attempted to be cooperative with voters (while observed by team members). in one instance an opposition observer complained to the local chairperson (a supporter of the government) about electioneering outside the polling place but she replied that her duties were inside the polling station, not outside. however, poll workers and precinct party and independent observers were very cooperative with team members in answering questions posed by our observation teams.

In terms of the equipment and materials, the consensus of the teams was that the ultraviolet light and marking spray used to indicate that the voter had voted (to prevent repeat voting) worked fairly well. Each precinct was equipped with two ultraviolet lights (one as a backup), extra batteries, and sufficient spray to cover thumbs of the number of registered voters in the precinct. We were told on a few occasions by observers and precinct workers that there were cases where a voter who had been sprayed had attempted to vote again were turned away (although no team members actually witnessed this). There were some observable initial difficulties in administering the spray (such as missing the thumb and spraying other fingers) but this was rare. One team heard a report that a voter claimed to have washed the thumb and voted a second time, but the team did not witness this directly. There were no shortages of ballots and ballot boxes (although in one case it was observed that one ballot box was so full that the ballots overflowed the box and were not fully deposited in the box). In general, the equipment worked well.

Ballot boxes were translucent, so observers could see ballots inside. Ballots could not be read since they were in envelopes. One of our observers congratulated the local chairperson, noting that this device guarded against anyone placing marked ballots in the box before polls opened. He compared this favorably with the US, where boxes are usually wood or metal. The chairwoman laughed and explained that boxes were translucent because the US government (ironically) insisted that they must be.

There were however problems with the list of voters. Some local party or candidate observers complained that they could not check names of persons voting and compare this to the posted voter lists. On many occasions voters complained that their names were not on the list at the precinct. Occasionally this was due to voter erroneously attempting to vote at the wrong precinct, which was more common in buildings that held two or three precincts (which was quite often the case particularly in Baku). In the case that there was a mistake in the list, the voter had the option to obtain a court order to provide permission to vote. Most problems were rectified using this procedure, although on a least one occasion the team observed that a voter was prevented from voting even with a court order (although the precinct chair claimed that the court order was invalidly signed). On a few occasions voters simply refused to get a court order and refrained from voting altogether (largely due to frustration with the process). Although there were few problems in the identification process, on a least a few occasions voters were prevented from voting because of the lack of proper identification materials. However, these were rare instances and overall the voter identification process appeared to work fairly well in the precincts visited by the teams.

As far as intentional misconduct is concerned, in the voting procedure no team member witnessed any acts of misconduct first hand. There were some reports by party and independent observers of them witnessing some acts of misconduct (although this had more to do with the placement of stacks of ballot papers or other suspicious behavior) but far more numerous were reported rumors of misconduct occurring at other precincts (these included claims that exit poll workers were biased in sampling of voters exiting the polls). In one constituency, in Deviche, one team followed up on such rumors by going to the precinct of the reported misconduct, and interviewed precinct commission members, the party and independent observers, exit poll workers and also the chair of the constituency. However, there was no apparent evidence of misconduct at the precinct where it was rumored to have occurred.

In terms of the vote counting procedure, voter turnout was also reported as relatively low at around 40%. Unfortunately, most teams were unable to complete observations of the vote counting procedure (largely because of severe time constraints placed on them). Only a few teams were able to witness the vote counting and only one witnessed the vote totaling procedure in two precincts (located in the same building) in Constituency 36. The team concluded that the precinct workers were very meticulous in ensuring that the number of votes was accurate, inspected the ballots for inaccuracies that would invalidate the vote (there were only three such ballots invalidated out of over 700 votes cast in two precincts). The team was very confident that at least in those two precincts the counting procedure was transparent, relatively carefully conducted and that vote count was accurate. In other precincts it was reported that there were shouting matches, but over all the counting procedure appeared to be relatively systematic and meticulous. However our observations were limited to only a few precincts--thus no general conclusions could be drawn regarding the accuracy of the counting procedure overall, nor the reporting process from the precinct level to compile district aggregate results.

As a side note, it did appear later to the group that the intention of the CEC was to employ our observations as a counterbalance to expected criticisms from the OSCE, official US Observers, and perhaps others (although the CEC did not pay the expenses of the groups and the group received no pay for our services and to reiterate, we did not receive any guidance nor directions from the CEC as to how to proceed with our observations). Part of this was revealed by the CEC’s insistence that we must have a news conference at 9 p.m. on election night, which was far too early to offer anything of substance or useful regarding the election (since we had not been able to tabulate nor discuss the observations of the group as a whole prior to the news conference). Beyond being an unpleasant surprise to the group, it appeared that the news conference did not achieve its desired effect. The questions were almost uniformly hostile and suspicious. Many journalists were suspicious that our job was to whitewash the election process—which, of course, we emphatically did not and will not do. In addition, ironically the haste with which the CEC called the news conference pulled our teams out early in the counting process, so most teams could not compete their observations. Thus, in no way could we substantively counter the main source of criticism of the election posed by organizations such as the OSCE regarding the final, district level, counting procedure.

To reiterate, this preliminary report SHOULD NOT be considered a complete appraisal by the observation teams. A complete report can ONLY be conducted after sufficient time has passed to complete the content analysis procedure and the data has been analyzed.