Electronic Voting, Spring 2020Apr 20 notes and discussion
Part of
the CS:4980:0004 Electronic Voting Notes
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International law is founded on treaties between countries and the case law that builds on those treaties. Treaties have force only in the countries that have signed them, and in some cases, that force is moderated because, while the executive branch in the signatory country has signed, the legislature never ratified. In those cases, the executive branch is bound by the treaty but domestic courts may not consider it binding law, and the executive branch may unilaterally abrogate the treaty without legislative assent.
I the domain of elections and international human-rights law in general, the United States has been a major force in the drafting of these treaties, but we have a bad habit of signing but not ratifying them.
Article 21 is very brief, but it sets a reasonably high bar. Elanor Roosevelt chaired the committee that drafted it. This is not a treaty, but it is deeply embedded in the structure of international law.
Article 23 is lifted from the Universal Declaration, but this time, it is a treaty, binding on all signatories from the Americas. The OAS was formed not long after World War II, under US leadership, as part of the Cold War fight against Communism. Despite this, we never ratified this human rights document. It appears that, of the signatories, only Venezuela has abrogated this treaty. All the other signatories are still bound by it.
This is the treaty that engineered the end of the Soviet Union. It was drafted by all of the members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and it still binds most of the northern hemisphere nations north of Mexico and Canada. A standard joke is that it covers everyone from Vancouver to Vladivlastok (some people add Vienna or Venice to this list).
This document does not mention elections at all, but section VIII has important consequences: Signatories are forbidden to interfere in the affairs of other signatories, and the equal rights and self-determination clauses effectively require something like free elections without ever mentioning them.
The Charter of Paris is the result of continued negotiation between the signatories of the Helsinki Accords about what they mean. Annex I to the charter, in less than 2 pages, is a major expansion of international law, giving far more information about elections than any prior work.
The United States is a signatory to the Charter, but it is not technically a treaty. Nonetheless, it is considered to be a foundational document in the area of international law, as it regards elections. It is the foundation of the standards by which the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe election observing missions judge the elections of member states.
Do not assume that because the OSCE's name says Europe that its effects are confined to Europe. Remember that this all sits on top of treaties signed by all of the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries and therefore, that these standards for democratic elections apply to almost all of the nations north of Mexico and China. (Switzerland is the outlier.)
George Bush (the first) signed this on behalf of the United States.
This is a genuinely European document. The Council of Europe does not include the United States. Their effort at producing standards for E-voting is fascinating because it rests on international law, and is therefore flexible enough to permit the wide range of variation between the way different nations conduct elections.
This standards document is extremely terse and principled. Each seciton begins with a particular basic right that an election must protect, and each of the requirements listed in that section is a defensible guard for that right. The entire document is very terse, unlike the gigantic election standards produced by the US Federal Election Commission and later the Election Assistance Commission.