Special Voting Arrangements

Special voting arrangements (SVAs) are designed to expand voting opportunities to individuals who are otherwise not able to vote and thus to facilitate the principle of universal suffrage. SVAs are defined as arrangements that allow voters to exercise their right to vote by alternative means to casting their ballot in person, on election day, in the default polling station in the voter’s constituency. In recent decades, electoral stakeholders have been keen to study and explore the opportunities of how to make voting more accessible and convenient to voters, especially in the face of declining voter participation across the globe. 

International IDEA has developed several knowledge products on the topic including the Special Voting Arrangement Handbook (2023), Dataset on Out of Country Voting, Technology and Turnout (2022), the SVA Dataset (2021) and Voting from Abroad Handbook (2007) and a database on the Use of E-Voting Around the World.