Cambodia election ranked 5th most flawed in survey

A new report by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Sydney has ranked Cambodia’s 2013 national election as the fifth most “flawed or failed” out of the 73 national ballots held around the world between July 2012 and December 2013. Based on surveys completed by a total of 855 election experts and observers around the world, the report was released on February 24 by the Electoral Integrity Project, which is located at the schools of government at the two prestigious universities. … Cambodia, with its score of 45.6, performed better than only Belarus, the Republic of Congo, Djibouti, and Equatorial Guinea. … In Cambodia, where 38 observers were asked to take part, 15 responded, identifying voter registration—for which the country scored 30 out of 100—as the main setback at last year’s election. The strongest area for the July election was in the area of vote counting, where the country scored 65 out of 100, which was still below the overall average of 73. Other areas scoring particularly poorly were “campaign finance” (35), “electoral authorities” (42) and “media coverage” (43). … The Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia had estimated that up to 1.25 million voters may have been disenfranchised during the July election. …

Alex Willemyns and Mech Dara
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/cambodia-election-ranked-5th-most-flawed-in-survey-53518/