CDL-AD(2024)017: Interim Opinion on constitutional and legislative solutions for future electoral processes

The Venice Commission's first opinion on Haiti's electoral framework. It was requested by letter of 4 March 2024 from Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, who asked the Commission to analyse the legislative framework for Haiti's elections alongside the recommendations of past OAS electoral observation missions, and to help identify legislative solutions for future electoral processes.

The Commission is explicit about the limits of its role. The choice among those solutions belongs to the authorities and the people of Haiti; its own task is to supply the analysis, the international standards and the comparative experience on which an informed decision can rest. The opinion is interim because, with no stable institutions in place and a meeting with the Transitional Presidential Council still pending, the Commission published without having heard the Haitian side.

Its recommendations set the agenda the two later opinions build on: that every Haitian national be able to take part, that voters be properly registered, that access to the vote be equal across the territory, and that restrictions on the right to be elected be limited to criminal convictions. On the machinery, it asks for a lower electoral administration balanced in composition whose members cannot be removed at will, faster and transparent transmission of results, an appeal that does not return to the body being appealed against, and full access for domestic and international observers at every stage.

On representation it asks for limited public campaign financing that does not reward parties with no real basis, equal access to public media, and effective measures for women and young people as both candidates and voters. Haiti's last Parliament held four women among 149 members.

Adopted at the Commission's 139th Plenary Session on 21-22 June 2024, after approval by the Council for Democratic Elections on 20 June, on the basis of comments by Michael Frendo, Eirik Holmøyvik, Janine Otálora Malassis and François Séners.