CEP regulatory framework for the deployment of party agents (mandataires)

The CEP's regulatory framework for the deployment of party agents, adopted under Constitution articles 191 and 191.2, the electoral decree of 2 March 2015 and the arrêté of 29 March 2016. It defines the conditions for accrediting agents, their rights and obligations, and how their presence in voting bureaux is organized on polling day. An agent is any person designated by a party or political grouping registered with the CEP, by a cartel or by an independent candidate, to represent them in the voting bureaux on polling day; under article 156.1 of the electoral decree the CEP facilitates their access to voting bureaux during the poll and the count, transparently and on equal terms.

An agent must be a voter registered in the electoral register. The same person may not be presented as agent for different parties, groupings, cartels or independent candidates at once, on pain of sanction. Whatever the number of candidates in a race, a party or grouping may be represented by only one agent in a given voting bureau, and may have agents only in the constituencies where it fields candidates; parties, groupings, cartels and independent candidates are held responsible for their agents' conduct. The Council encourages them to include women and people with reduced mobility among their agents.

Accreditation is managed through an online registration platform, which the text says is there to ensure the accreditation process is fully transparent. Because party agents must be present when electoral material is sealed under the reception-center rules, this framework forms part of the chain-of-custody accountability rather than a procedural detail.