CEPPS in Tunisia

CEPPS has been working in Tunisia since 2016 to promote effective citizen oversight of Tunisian elections and to help lay the groundwork for greater citizen oversight of the performance of newly elected officials. CEPPS has also strived to raise citizens’ awareness of political and electoral processes in the context of the country’s democratic transition.

CEPPS Overarching Goals:

CEPPS seeks to promote the integrity of Tunisia’s local and national elections as a sustainable vehicle for peacefully and democratically choosing leaders. CEPPS partners with Tunisian civil society organizations, journalists and government institutions to empower citizens to meaningfully participate in political and electoral processes, emphasizing the inclusion of women, youth and other traditionally marginalized groups.

CEPPS Approach:

CEPPS supports non-partisan civil society organizations (CSOs) to recruit, train and deploy thousands of Tunisian citizen observers to witness local and national elections. These observers use specialized methodologies and new technologies to report on all phases of the electoral process from voter registration through post-election appeals. Taken collectively, their efforts yield objective assessments of the elections’ integrity, promote greater transparency, and identify improvements needed for future elections.

We support local CSOs to engage in voter education and registration efforts with a focus on youth, women, persons with disabilities and other marginalized groups. The CEPPS civic education efforts are concentrated in Tunisia’s southern and interior regions, where the decline in voter turnout has been the most pronounced.

Together with Tunisian CSOs, journalists and government institutions, CEPPS implements voter and civic education programming targeting marginalized groups, including women living in rural areas, persons with disabilities, and youth.

CEPPS Key Achievements in Tunisia:

Tunisia’s electoral structure and data collections are more sophisticated today:

During the 2019 elections, CEPPS’s six observer group partners trained and deployed 3,700 observers (55% women and 77% youth) for the first-round presidential election and nearly 5,000 observers (58% women and 42% men) for the legislative and presidential run-off elections.
The CEPPS observation partner Mourakiboun conducted successful parallel vote tabulations (PVT) during the 2018 municipal and 2019 presidential elections.
Mourakiboun was able to use statistically-sound data on voter turnout and results to confirm that 99% of polling stations correctly administered voting, directly contributing to public confidence in the integrity of elections.

Tunisia’s electoral communications and outreach is more comprehensive than ever before:

In the 2019 national elections, 56 reports were produced and published by the six observer group partners to help inform the public about all aspects of the electoral process, with skills developed in CEPPS led training on external communications, media outreach and new technologies.
In the 2019 national elections, a CEPPS led international election observation mission deployed nearly 100 short-term observers who observed the voting process at more than 430 polling stations on election day in an effort to build public trust and reinforce the legitimacy of national elections and amplify the work of domestic observer groups.
Ahead of the 2019 national elections, CEPPS supported a wide-scale voter mobilization campaign. Partner CSOs encouraged the electoral participation of more than 200,000 Tunisians through hundreds of in-person and digital voter mobilization events and activities.
To inform rural women of elections and the importance of their vote, CEPPS deployed voter outreach campaigns in the lead up to both the 2018 municipal elections and 2019 national elections, expanding reach to more than 60,000 rural women.
To make electoral information available to citizens who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, CEPPS developed a sign language lexicon of nearly 200 electoral concepts and a companion smartphone application.