I just learned of a project from IFES on election standards. Here is a short description of the project:

The Electoral Challenges and Standards Project encompasses a comparative study of five critical issues facing election administrators world-wide: refugee and external voting; boundary delimitation; political finance; election technology, and EMBs’ use of the Internet.

The project engaged five experts to develop framework documents that examine standards for these topics from the perspective of human rights conventions as well as those standards that are included in regional initiatives such as those by the Association of Central and Eastern European Election Officials, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Southern African Development Community, and the Council of Europe.

In order to receive comments from election administration practitioners, the frameworks will be discussed with EMBs through the regional associations of election officials. After comments have been received from EMBs, the Challenge project will develop five assistance packages to support EMBs in their administration of these new responsibilities under the standards frameworks.

Interestingly, they have five draft papers on this website, covering each of the critical issue areas:

• Steven Clift, Standards for EMB’s Use of the Internet.
• Jeremy Grace, Standards for External and Abstentee Voting.
• Lisa Handley, Boundary Delimitation Standards.
• Roy Saltman, Standards for U.S. Voting Systems.
• Marcin Walecki, Political Finance Standards.

I’ve not had a chance yet to read these five papers, but they look of interest to those who are thinking about election administration standards.