In Mongolia, the main election management body is called the General Election Commission. Law on the Election to the Parliament: This Law states that the “Structure of the Election Body shall consist of central and local level electoral bodies. The state central election body is the General Election Commission (GEC) and local organizations are the District Election Committee, Sub-District Election Committee and Division Election Committee (Polling Station Committee). The GEC comprises of 9 members: Five members of the Commission are appointed by the Parliament at the suggestion of the Standing Committee on State Structure, two by the President of Mongolia and other two at the suggestion of the Supreme Court from genuine civil servants.
The Law empowers the GEC to receive the register of voters consolidated by the State Citizens Registration and Information Service in the form it has approved, to distribute it to its sub-committees for verification of the name, address, age, and ID number and state citizen registration number of voters listed on the register and processing of corrections, additions (issuance of voter’s certificate), deletions of names (deceased voters) and transfers. In the Law, Article 46 provides for the appointment of party agents by political parties and coalitions, but only three days prior to polling day.
Under Article 7, Powers of the Commission, it states that “The Commission shall exercise the following powers:
-to plan and organize preparatory activities of referendums and elections;
-to monitor implementation of the election and referendum legislation;
-to unify and manage the activities of election committees of all levels;
-to introduce legislations on referendums and election to the public, improve voter education, conduct trainings and research in this field and provide information to the public on election process and dates;
-to approve official forms of rules, procedure, instructions and documents stipulated in referendum and election legislations.”
The 2013 Elections was administered by a four-tiered election administration comprised of the General Election Commission (GEC), Territorial Election Commissions in 21 Aimags (Provinces) and the Capital City, Ulaanbaatar, District Election Commissions in 339 districts in both Ulaanbaatar and rural districts, Precinct Election Commissions –established in 39 Diplomatic and Consular representations abroad.
The GEC approved more than 40 guidelines, procedures and samples of official documents, and printed a booklet with GEC decisions, which was used by lower-level election commissions to guide them before and on election day in the 2013 Presidential Elections.
Voter registration in Mongolia is passive, periodic and based on the national Civil Registration and Information Database. It involves fingerprint technology (Biometric Voter Registration). The State Registration Agency, which also maintains the state civil register, prepares the electronic voter register for each election. The electronic voter register was posted on the SRA website for public scrutiny, as required by the Presidential Election Law. This allowed each voter to check his/her record and the location and number of the polling station by entering a unique ID number. The Polling Station Committee shall display the voter register for public scrutiny not less than 15 days prior to the polling day (Art. 20.4).
The Election Law requires that governors review the voter register annually, comparing it with the residence/land register. Revisions and/or corrections are, however, the responsibility of the Division/Polling Station Committee, though there are no uniform regulations, procedures and operational instructions to complete this task, thus making it vulnerable to arbitrary decisions.
The official campaign begins a month and ends one day prior to the election day. Stricter regulation of political advertising was introduced in the new electoral law, as parties were forced to submit their campaign platforms to the General Election Commission (GEC) and to hold on to these platforms in their advertising.
The electronic voting system was introduced to Mongolia in 2012 for parliamentary and local elections. Voters cast their votes by filling an oval at the left of the name of the person on ballot papers and insert them into the tabulation machine. The GEC also provides with tactile voting devices for blind or visually impaired people and a Braille version of the electoral identity card is available at each polling station.
In 2013 Elections, every polling station was equipped with fingerprint scanners for voter identification, which were operated by the employees of the State Registration Agency (SRA), and with electronic vote counting equipment (VCE). VCEs are ballot scanning and counting machines that produced the election results immediately upon the close of voting, including printed reports, and transmitted the results directly to the GEC. As per the PEL, after the end of the vote count, the TECs randomly selected one PEC in each rural district and two PECs in each district of Ulaanbaatar to conduct manual re-counts of the cast ballots.
Source
Voter Registration in Mongolia Assessment of Policies and Practices- A Research Report, The Asia Foundation, 2009,
https://asiafoundation.org/resources/pdfs/VoterRegistrationinMongoliaAssessmentofPoliciesandPracticesEng.pdf.
Electoral Management Mongolia, ACE Project, http://aceproject.org/epic-en/em/CDCountry?set_language=en&topic=EM&country=MN&questions=all
Mongolia Presidential Election 26 June 2013, OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report, Sep 18, 2013,
http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/105150?download=true
Resource :
Link : Mongolian Election Commission- Official Website
PDF : Voter Registration in Mongolia: Assessment of Policies and Practices