USAI's program is focused on enhancing the capacity of the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the Election Complaints and Appeal Panel (ECAP) to independently deliver credible and widely-accepted elections to an informed voting public. 

OBJECTIVES

• Supporting institutions to efficiently and independently uphold their roles and responsibilities.
• Support the CEC and ECAP to effectively conduct local and parliamentary elections.

CORE Activities

Capacity Building:  The program is developing interactive training programs for electoral staff, and building institutional knowledge and resources that will help the CEC and ECAP become more sustainable, inclusive organizations. Targeted capacity building of the CEC and field-based staff includes key technical areas such as strategic and operational planning, election operations, voter registration, voter education, public outreach and the use of technology in elections. 

Election Technology: The program is helping the CEC and ECAP develop IT solutions to improve the efficiency of election management and to increase transparency of Kosovo elections. 

Voter education: Help CEC and ECAP are helping to design an innovative voter education campaign, including a series of print, audio, and video voter information products produced in five local languages and reaching more than one million voters.  In addition, recent elections made extensive use of social media by local institutions, reaching out to voters in the country and abroad.

Inclusive elections: The program places placing special attention on building the capacity and inclusion of traditionally marginalized communities, including women, youth, and persons with disabilities – both as election officials and voters.

KEY RESULTS

• CEC and ECAP successfully administered two major election events in 2017 – June 11 extraordinary assembly elections and October 22 local elections;
• Successful utilization of USAID supported election technology by CEC and ECAP resulted in increased transparency of election process and improved management of elections in Kosovo;
• Improved CEC and ECAP strategic and operational planning practices;
• CEC established an internal gender equality commission that with the support of IFES, conducted a gender equality assessment, and developed a Gender Equality Policy and Action Plan, which is being implemented by the CEC; 
• 156 women members of political parties were trained by the CEC Municipal Election Officers through the Women in Electoral Leadership Program; 
• successfully incorporated open data principles in the new CEC website
• Finalized monitoring and evaluation plans for CEC and ECAP and developed the tools for data collection for each indicator; 
• 7 election procedures improved and 2 poll worker manuals produced in five languages; 
• 120 election officials trained through 46 training sessions and workshops; 
• Over 500,000 voters looked up their polling center and nearly 6,000 changed their polling location using new online voter registry tool;
• Over 1,100,000 voters reached with voter information in five languages. 14 election procedures improved and 2 poll worker manuals produced in five languages

Project Duration:        August 2016 - February 2019
Partner:                           International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
Contact:                          Luljeta Gjonbala