https://doi.org/10.7906Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems1334-46841334-4676Hrvatsko interdisciplinarno društvoCroatian Interdisciplinary SocietyIvana Lučića 1, 10000 Zagreb
petra.cacic@indecs.euhttp://www.idd.com.hr10.7906/indecs.20.2.7Original scientific paperOpen Election Data: Evidence from Croatia in a
Comparative Perspective*ĐurmanPetra**1Nikić ČakarDario2BobanDavor2University of Zagreb, Faculty of LawZagreb, CroatiaUniversity of Zagreb, Faculty of Political ScienceZagreb, Croatia
This is the extended version of the abstract published in: Vujić, M. and
Šalamon, D., eds.: Book of abstracts *of the National Open Data Conference.
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Traffic and Transport Sciences, *Zagreb, 2021.
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law, Trg Republike Hrvatske 14, HR – 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
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This article explores the concept of open election data, as a specific type of institutional open data. Transparency of electoral procedures, as the most fundamental democratic process, is crucial for the legitimacy of democratic political systems. By providing detailed information on electoral processes in open formats for the re-use of the general public, open election data provide an additional democratic dimension for contemporary democracies. The aim of this article is to assess the state of open election data comparatively and in Croatia. The analytical findings suggest that the availability of open election data in most of the countries included is rather limited in scope, with significant cross-national and within-country variations. Numerous countries make only election results, political party and candidate registration lists and polling station information available in open formats, while other types of election data cannot be accessed in machine-readable forms.
open dataopen election datatransparencyelectoral processCroatia
Open data are one of the most salient developments in e-government and
e-participation. The availability of data to everyone in an open and
machine-readable form, free of charge, represents a specific mechanism for achieving
government transparency, which goes much further in accomplishing the values of open
government than traditional transparency, which refers to the accessibility of
information, regardless of its form. The re-use of open data for commercial or
non-commercial purposes also promotes participatory government, because users (i.e.
the public – individuals, NGOs, private businesses, media, academia, etc.)
constitute a critical element in generating the final outcome of the data (re)use,
including different applications, sophisticated business product based on open data
(e.g. legal information portals, business portals) and scientific research and
analyses. The potential benefits of different categories of open data have already
been well documented in the literature 1,2. Different types of
institutional and political data – such as data on state organisations and public
sector authorities, their functioning, election data and similar – are particularly
important for the democratic legitimacy of politico-administrative system. Because
the transparency principle represents a conditio sine qua non for the democratic
electoral process, information on different aspects of electoral organisations and
processes – such as data on election and referendum results, campaign financing,
electoral management bodies or voter lists – constitute a crucial element for
providing the legitimacy and citizens’ trust in politico-democratic processes.
Accurate, complete and good quality open election data (OED) can enhance electoral
integrity and accountability by providing detailed information on electoral
processes not only to selected stakeholders, but also to the public in general,
enabling them to make informed decisions1,3-5. In addition, primary users of OED such as journalists and
scientists can reuse the data for scientific and professional analyses, predictions,
interpretations and similar. This article represents an exploratory study with a
purpose of assessing the state of OED in Croatia, from a comparative and
national-specific perspective. To do so, we first elaborate OED as a specific type
of institutional open data, after which we consider the theoretical relevance of
election data for contemporary political systems. In the methodological part of the
article, Croatia is compared to other EU member states and the UK with respect to
the main OED indicators, followed by in-depth analysis of OED ecosystem in Croatia,
including the regulatory framework, types of OED available, features of the
portal/website, data provider and users. The applied research method included desk
research and content analyses of Internet documents, portals and official websites.
Although there is no single, unanimously accepted categorisation of open data types,
they do not significantly differ. As identified in one of the earlier
categorisations, the main types of open data include business, geographic, legal,
meteorological, transport and social data27; p.14. Within the category of social data –
which includes different statistical data, such as economic, employment, health and
population – specific types of institutional and political/public administration
data can be extracted. These encompass data on different organisational and
functional aspects of politico-administrative organisations and other public sector
authorities at different levels of government (state, local, regional). This
includes data on electoral processes, public officials, public sector bodies (e.g.
lists of public sector authorities, register of national minorities’ councils) and
their functioning (e.g. schedule of government meetings). The openness of this type
of data is particularly relevant for strengthening the procedural legitimacy of
politico-administrative systems. In general, electoral process in a democracy refers
to all procedures and activities related to legally defined appointment of public
officials and public bodies by voters. Electoral process, therefore, consists of
procedures conducted before, during and after election day. The basic sources of
election information are legal acts and other official documents regulating
elections3. They primarily
include information on the type of elections (e.g. parliamentary, presidential,
local, European), the type of electoral system and its characteristics,
constituencies, candidates, electoral lists, judicial and constitutional court
decisions on elections and provisional and final results. Although a normative
framework that contains electoral law as well as judicial practice does not
represent electoral data in a narrower sense, they can be publicly available in open
formats and in an easy searchable way via specialised portals or official websites.
Therefore, the electoral framework is considered a component of electoral data3,8.
Election data include re-usable information on the pre-election process (campaign
financing, voter and candidate registration, polling stations), the election process
itself (e-voting and counting, voter lists) and the results of the election process
and post-election actions (publishing results, complaints). We refer to OED only
when they are published in an open, machine-readable format4. Election data are, in general, collected (and
provided) by the central (state) organisations which organise and conduct the
elections (Electoral Management Boards – EMBs, Central Election Commission or
similar management bodies). In some countries, civil society associations have taken
the role of data providers, in addition to their role as data users and
mediators53; p.210. Election data can be published on the
official websites of EMBs, open data portals or third-party websites/portals, as in
the case of election databases published by international
organisations/associations. Primary users include scientists, media, journalists,
electoral observers and agencies, who produce electoral predictions, analyses,
explanations and interpretations of electoral processes and results based on OED. A
secondary user of OED is the general public, whose use of the data is not in-depth,
but rather related to information, education and socialisation, as such data
facilitate familiarisation with the organisation, implementation and results of
democratic procedures. The role of the public is, however, particularly emphasised
in the context of OED. Namely, alongside being open data users in the ‘outcome’
dimension of the electoral process, citizens are involved as participants – active
(candidates) and/or passive (voters) – during the elections as the most fundamental
democratic process. Privacy issues are, in general, not very problematic in the case
of election results, due to secret ballot for voters and public political candidacy.
However, it is an issue of considerable concern in the case of voter registration
and, especially, the e-voting process6. Principles for OED do not differ from the standards of open
data in general. According to the Open Election Data Initiative, election data are
open when they are: (i) timely (available as quickly as necessary for it to be
useful); (ii) granular (primary, raw data which are not in an aggregate or modified
form); (iii) available for free on the Internet (available without any monetary
restrictions and easy to locate); (iv) complete and in bulk (all data are contained
in a file so that the entire dataset can be obtained in one download); (v)
analysable (available in digital, machine-readable form); (vi) non-proprietary
(open, non restrictive formats over which no entity has exclusive control – e.g.
CSV, XML and JSON)7; (vii)
non-discriminatory (available to any individual or organisation without limitations
based on user identity; anonymous access to the data); (viii) license-free (open for
re-use and redistribution for any purpose)8; and (ix) permanently available (permanent URL, portal or online
archive)13. In practice, some serious
limitations can be found when it comes to the type, availability and quality of OED.
First, OED are often reduced to election results. Data related to voter registration
and election results are the most common type of election data published, while
information on political/electoral financing is more rarely available. Second,
election results, as well as other types of election data, are not always published
in open formats. Publishing election results as images instead of open file formats
impedes their re-use and diminishes their democratic potential. Varying formats for
official results also represent a barrier for their usability 3; p.210&p.213, 4;
p.8. Third, whether published in machine-readable formats or not, the
comprehensiveness and consistency of election data are always an important issue.
Inconsistent retention of records is therefore an important obstacle for the
openness of election data. With respect to all mentioned aspects, the existing
literature points at significant variations, not only between different countries,
but also within them.
Over the last two decades, the principles of government transparency and openness
have become inherent concepts of contemporary governance and decision-making
processes. They represent political values, referring to the availability of
different government information to the public (transparency) and the possibility
for the public to provide feedback information to the government (openness) 14. Growing requests for government ‘opening’
towards the public can be attributed to recent developments and doctrines in public
administration, such as good governance, which has been strongly advocated by
international organisations (e.g. OECD, United Nations, European Union). However,
government secrecy is always perceived by the public as suspicious 15, even if the government functions regularly
and efficiently. Proactive provision of different government data to the public, on
the other hand, implies there is nothing to hide. It enables the public to hold
government officials accountable, thereby promoting citizens’ trust and the
legitimacy of politico administrative institutions and actors. Transparency is
primarily achieved via right to know regulation and its instruments, such as open
meetings, media reports, publishing documents, registers and databases 14,16,17. The importance of election
data, as a type of institutional data, stems from the elemental importance of the
election process in a democratic political system. The transparency of election
results, the data on financing political campaign, the composition of electoral
management bodies and similar information represents a necessary precondition for
the public to be motivated to participate in election processes. Availability of
such information in open formats, containing comprehensive and accurate data,
provides additional democratic value as well as practical benefits for the
government and the public. On the one hand, it widens the circle of potential open
data users, because detailed election information is not reserved for selected
stakeholders only (such as important media), but is available to the general public,
including civil society organisations, journalists, election observers, scientists
and individuals in general 3; p.210. As a
result, the general public can better understand the election process, which has
effects on procedural legitimacy, and make informed decisions, which concerns the
outcome legitimacy. On the other hand, media, journalists and scientists – who
represent the primary users of OED – are enabled to reuse the data for scientific
and professional analyses, predictions and interpretations, which can produce very
practical benefits. For instance, analyses based on OED can reveal interesting
findings, factor interrelations or shortcomings of the election process (such as the
quality across districts regarding population size, manipulation of electoral
district boundaries and the like), which can then be useful input for policymakers
to improve existing regulation and/or practices.
Although discussion of the benefits of OED has been gaining salience, ‘relatively
little election data is published according to open-data principles’ 3; p.213. Regarding the type of data, election
results are the most commonly published OED, with other types of election data being
less commonly publicly available, especially data on political and electoral
financing. Some technical deficiencies of OED include the duration of data
availability, the granularity of available data, restrictive licensing,
non-machine-readable data formats and registration and authentication requirements
for data users 3; p.213. In methodological
terms, cross-national comparisons of different OED are burdened by language
barriers, because the name of the dataset is usually officially available in the
native language only. Different databases, mostly published by academia and
scientific organisations, contain comparative OED and are very useful, although most
often reduced to election results. The Open Election Data Initiative lists 16
categories of election data that can be published as open data, covering all
activities of the electoral process in the pre-election period, moving to the
election day and ending in the post-election period 3; pp.212 213. In this part, we selected seven key categories which
represent the core of the democratic election process and applied them to the
analysis of availability of OED in 27 EU member states plus the UK9 (see Table 1). We opted for the EU
case selection framework mostly because it represents the most comprehensive open
data legislative initiative and also because of the high democratic standards to
which its member states must adhere. To analyse the availability of OED in the EU
context, we focused our investigation primarily on two sources – the open data
portals of EU member states and the official websites of national electoral
management bodies. By doing so, we aimed to explore not only the impact of
‘external’ factors (EU legislation) on opening election data in an individual member
state, but also the ‘internal’, country-specific state of the art when it comes to
the question of availability of election data in open formats. Election data
classified as open is published in formats such as CSV, JSON and XML, while data
available in PDF, JPG and similar formats was not categorized as open. We also
limited the scope of the analysis to only parliamentary elections in each country,
mostly because the state-wide general elections to the representative bodies are
seen as first-order elections, while other levels of election are seen as of less
importance (local, regional, European). Table 1 shows that, in general, the
availability of OED in most of the countries included in the analysis is rather
limited in scope. A large number of countries make only election results, political
party and candidate registration lists and polling station information available in
open formats. The availability of other categories of election data in open format
is rather scarce, especially those relating to voter lists (access to detailed
information about eligible voters), election campaigns (availability of timetables
for campaigns) and electoral complaints (number of complaints and the outcomes of
conflict resolution). In eight countries, election data are not published in any
open format, but are rather available in other online forms which are not
machine-readable. There is also no consistency with regard to platforms where OED
are published. In most cases, OED can be accessed on the official websites of
electoral management bodies, while a smaller portion of election data, particularly
election results, is downloadable from national open data portals. It is also
possible to find OED on other websites as well, which implies that OED are scattered
around the Internet instead of being kept available in timely and permanently manner
at one central spot. In some instances, it took great effort to trace the final
location where OED are published.
Election results
Pol. party/ candidate
registration
Campaign
finance
Election
campaigns
Voter lists
Polling stations
Electoral complaints
Austria
*
Belgium
Bulgaria
*/**
*/**
Croatia
*/**
**
**
Cyprus
Czech
Republic
*
*
*
Denmark
**
Estonia
*/**
*/**
Finland
**
**
France
Germany
*/**
**
*
Greece
Hungary
*
Ireland
*
*
Italy
**
Latvia
*/**
*/**
*
Lithuania
**
**
**
**
**
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
*/**
*
Poland
**
**
**
Portugal
*/**
Romania
**
**
**
**
Slovakia
*/**
**
Slovenia
**
Spain
Sweden
*/**
United
Kingdom
**
**
**
**
Remark: empty cells refer to no open data.
*Open Data Portal
**Electoral Administration
When turning attention away from general cross-national observations to the
country-level perspective, we can report several cases of good practice, among which
Lithuania, Romania and United Kingdom stand out. This is particularly true for
Lithuania, with its Central Electoral Commission publishing a large variety of
election data in machine-readable formats. Data on election results, voter
registration, candidates and the financing of political campaigns are systematically
organised, easily searchable and accessible and cover the whole period since the
introduction of Lithuanian democracy in 1990. On the other hand, there are also
several cases of bad practice in publishing OED. For instance, Ireland and Austria
have published results of some parliamentary elections which are not complete and in
bulk. It is possible to find the results of the Austrian 2019 parliamentary
elections at the open data portal, but only for the region of Upper Austria and not
for the rest of the country. Furthermore, there are also cases like Spain and
Portugal, which have a significant amount of election data available at the official
websites of central election management bodies, but it can be downloaded only as PDF
documents. From a comparative perspective, it is important to notice that new
democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are apparently doing much better in
terms of the ‘openness’ of election data than their ‘older’ counterparts in Western
Europe. Table 1 shows that democratic latecomers in CEE such as Lithuania, Romania,
Latvia, Poland and Croatia have OED available on a much larger scale than
well-established democracies like France, Belgium and Luxembourg, without any OED
published, or Austria, Denmark, and Sweden, with only election results published in
open formats. This observation is somewhat puzzling when taking into consideration
the differences in the level of politico-economic and democratic development between
these two groups of countries, so further research should be conducted to provide a
plausible explanation for these differences. Finally, cross-national comparison of
OED is indeed overburdened by language barriers, because native language versions of
websites and published data are the norm. There were only few cases in our research
for which fully functional English version of websites and data are available, which
makes comparison difficult. On the other hand, there are several election databases
containing different election results in open formats from numerous countries and
these are a valuable source of OED for cross-national comparisons. For instance, The
European Election and Referendum Database 18
provides election results on a regional level for European countries and publishes
the results of parliamentary elections, EP elections, presidential elections and
EU-related referendums for 35 European countries. The Constituency-Level Elections
Archive (CLEA) 19 offers a dataset with
detailed election results at the constituency level for lower and upper chamber
legislative elections from around 170 countries. The Global Elections Database 20 provides data on the results of national and
subnational elections around the world, with data available in various open formats.
The ParlGov project 21 covers 37 EU and OECD
democracies, offering data on about 1700 parties, 1000 elections and 1600 cabinets,
with election results available in machine-readable files. The Political Data
Yearbook 22 is published on behalf of the
European Consortium of Political Research and covers ‘election results, national
referendum, changes in government, and institutional reforms for a range of
countries, within and beyond the EU’. Data are available in CSV and XLSX formats.
The previous comparative analysis shows that Croatia is doing very well in comparison
to other European countries, regardless of whether they are new democracies in CEE
or well-established democracies in the West. In this section, we take a bird-eye
snapshot of OED in Croatia, exploring other components of OED alongside indicators
compared in the previous section. We provide more detailed description of available
types of OED in Croatia, including their quality and providers, as well as legal
framework. In addition to these ‘provision’ elements, we assess the ‘outcome’
dimension of OED as well, i.e. the users of OED10. These elements are commonly referred as wider environment
of open data, i.e. open data ecosystem 1 and
represent areas or sub-areas of indicators within different assessment frameworks
(e.g. in Open Data Maturity Report, policy dimension – encompassing countries’ open
data policies and strategies, impact dimension - referring to open data re-use,
government policies and government action within readiness in Open Data Barometer).
For the purpose of this analysis, we rely on Open Data Maturity Report results as a
general referential benchmark, although these findings encompass open data in
general, not a specific category such as OED11. In Croatia, systemic regulation for open data is in place
within the Law on the Right to Access Information 24, which transposes the PSI Directive (as it is the case with other EU
member states who had to transpose the Open Data Directive into their national laws)
(see 25), postulating that each public body
must ensure that the data are published on the internet and that is easily findable
and machine-readable. In addition, a formal Open Data Policy (Politika otvorenih
podataka) was adopted in 2018 by the Croatian Government as a strategic direction
for further development of public administration openness, although without adopting
a strategy or action plan for implementing the policy. According to the Open Data
Maturity Report in policy dimension, Croatian score is slightly above the EU average
- 87 %. Specific regulations referring to OED can also be found – the reports on
campaign financing have to be published in open and machine-readable formats on the
official website of Croatian EMB, in accordance with the Law on financing political
activities, electoral campaigns and referendum 26. Other electoral regulations do not refer to the openness of
electoral data. The types of available OED include election and referendum results,
financing of political activities and campaign financing and the list of polling
stations. The most extensive category is certainly election and referendum results,
which encompass open data on presidential elections, parliamentary elections,
elections for the European Parliament (EP), local elections, elections for national
minorities’ councils and representatives and data on the referenda (national, local
and consultative). National election data comprise data from 2000 onwards
(presidential elections are held every five years and parliamentary elections every
four years); local elections data are available from 2013 (local elections take
place every four years), as well as are European elections data (first elections for
the European MPs held in 2013). Referendum data include data on two national
referendums held in 2012 and 2013, the first one on Croatian EU membership and
second one on the constitutional definition of the marriage. The owner and provider
of OED is the State Electoral Commission (Državno izborno povjerenstvo – DIP), which
publishes data on election results on its official website, data on election
campaign financing and regular financing of political activities and the list of
polling stations 27. Election results in open
formats can be found on the national Open Data Portal 28 as well. All election data available on the Portal as well
as on the DIP website are accessible without registration and free of charge. As in
the case of many other types of open data in Croatia, a nation-specific open license
is applied, which is substantially equivalent to the CC-BY license. OED are easily
findable through a general Google search and orderly structured on the DIP website,
while the Open Data Portal is easy searchable by filtering the type of
data/publisher. Regarding data quality, election results available on the DIP
official website and Open Data Portal are available in CSV and excel file formats,
financial reports on political activities and campaign financing are available in
PDF and JSON, while the list of polling stations can be downloaded in an excel file
format. Regarding content, general elections results are consistent since the 2000,
albeit with some deficiencies related to the count of spoiled votes and individual
vote counts for the representatives of national minorities. The data on
constituencies are not available in open file format, while the data on polling
stations are in open format but not integrated (available by constituency). Voter
registration information is not publicly available. Because election datasets are
static, uploading is not very frequent. The quality of metadata is one of the weak
points of available OED, with metadata missing on the official DIP website and very
scarce description of the election results datasets on the Open Data Portal.
Feedback options include sending an email to the data provider via official website
and an option to indicate an error and provide suggestion via the Open Data Portal.
There are three main types of primary users of OED in Croatia. First, there are
journalists, media and public opinion agencies who interpret and present the data to
the wider public via different media channels and whose activities are mostly
concentrated within the timeframe of a specific election. Second, there are
scientists and researchers (mostly political scientists), who permanently use
election data for scientific research and analyses. Third, different types of NGOs
use OED for their own analysis and policy papers, which are further used for policy
advocacy purposes or the education of the general public. For instance, the NGO GONG
regularly publishes various guides and manuals in the field of electoral politics,
but is also focused on civic education with regard to citizens’ electoral rights and
understanding of electoral processes 29. For
European elections in 2019 and local elections in 2021, in cooperation with agency
which provides IT support for the Croatian public sector, DIP launched applications
for tracing election results and for monitoring the functioning of polling station
committees. Although Croatia scores high on Portal usage according to the latest
Open Data Maturity Report (130/160), OED do not seem to be attractive type of open
data for individual users. Statistics on the use of datasets is not published on the
OD Portal nor on the DIP official website, but we can assume that such usage is
rather low. The results of a survey conducted within the TODO project at the Faculty
of Law, University of Zagreb, revealed a very low level of faculty employees’
familiarisation with the concept and benefits of different types of open data and,
considering the rather small academic community, we can assume that the same applies
for political scientists as well.
Despite numerous social advantages and the positive impact on citizens’ trust,
education and overall legitimacy of the politico-administrative system, the
potential of OED has not yet been accomplished in most of the countries 3. The observation of Yang et al. 30, that OED is largely an emerging area,
remains valid. On the one hand, some of the front-running countries in open data in
general, such as Austria and Spain, are lagging behind when it comes to the
‘opening’ of election data, while open data ‘followers’, such as Romania and
Croatia, are doing much better in providing OED. On the other hand, there are
countries like Spain and Portugal that publish very extensive amounts of election
data, but not in an open format. For researchers, this implies the necessity for
further research on such discrepancies between the countries, while for
practitioners (providers), it calls for more systemic opening of election data.
However, the problem may be in the ‘demand’ side of the sub-ecosystem; OED appear
not to be as attractive for individual users as geospatial, meteorological and some
other institutional data or data concerning current policy issues/problems (such as
data on the COVID-19 pandemic). The level and impetuses of election data re-use (and
open data re-use in general) in Croatia should be investigated in further research.
From a comparative perspective, Croatia is among the countries that have made
significant strides in making election data available in machine-readable formats. A
good practice in publishing comprehensive electoral results on behalf of DIP is
recognised as an example of increasing transparency and accountability in the 2021
Open Data Maturity Report. Still, more types of election data could be published in
an open format (e.g. candidate registrations, election campaigns, electoral
complaints) and the quality of existing metadata could be improved. However, in a
number of OED categories, Croatia scored better than a significant number of other
countries usually identified as front-runners in general open data initiatives or
are seen as ‘old’ democracies that are much more inclined to transparency practices
(e.g. France, Spain). Finally, we also argue that the significant differences
observed between new democracies in CEE and old democracies in western and southern
Europe could also pave the way for further research on OED. For instance, one could
explore the factors behind the higher levels of availability of OED in emerging
democracies in the post-communist world. Can these differences be explained by the
process of accession of these countries to the EU and the fostering of the EU
conditionality policy? Are there any region-specific factors that have made CEE
countries the frontrunners in opening election data? One possible explanation might
be that this is a result of infrastructure development (i.e. older democracies
already had long-term structures in place for handling election data, while newer
democracies did not, which made it possible for them to start from a greater level
of openness). These are puzzling research questions that require special attention
in future research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is part of TODO project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 857592.
REMARKS
The Open Data Maturity Report for 2021 stated that ‘an increase in the impact of open data on transparency and accountability was observed, where 74% of the Member States define the impact as high, 11 % as medium, and 7 % as a low’ [6].
This categorisation is in accordance with the list of priority areas for open data as identified by the European Commission (Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 November 2003 on the re-use of public sector information; repealed in 2019 by the Directive 2019/1024 on open data and the re-use of public sector information). The list of thematic categories for high-value datasets, as referred to in Article 13(1) of the Directive, includes geospatial, earth observation and environmental, meteorological, statistics, companies and company ownership and mobility data.
The most important sources of electoral law are the constitution and electoral laws. The constitution of a country generally states only the most important electoral principles, such as that suffrage is universal and equal and that elections are secret and mostly direct, the age at which active and passive suffrage is acquired for a particular type of election and elected state or supranational authorities. Sometimes the electoral principle according to which elections must be conducted can be included in the constitution (e.g. the proportional principle in the Czech constitution), and in some cases a specific type of electoral system can be constitutionalised as well (e.g. individual transferable voting in the Irish constitution). However, most electoral matters are left to the legislator to regulate by individual laws, which often have the status of organic laws (i.e. a qualified majority of votes is needed for their adoption in the parliament). Electoral law is usually not regulated by single, but rather by several acts (as is the case in Croatia).
This, in general, applies to democracies where elections are free and fair. For non-democratic countries – that is, those with totalitarian, authoritarian, hybrid and other undemocratic regimes where elections are not free and fair, or at least unfair – election data probably do not reflect the actual will of the citizens expressed in the elections, but are often fabricated in favour of regime candidates or electoral lists. Therefore, to analyse the election system and election data in a particular country, it is necessary to consider the type of political regime as well as the history of elections, before drawing conclusions on the credibility of election data.
An example is the non-profit project OpenElections which, during the 2018 general elections in the United States, converted and published official precinct-level election results in an open format. Until then, great variations between the states existed and under half of the states had election results in usable formats [4].
On e-voting see [9, 10].
XLS and DOC file formats are, for example, proprietary formats owned by Microsoft. PDF was previously also a proprietary format, until Adobe released PDF as an open, non-proprietary standard in 2008 [10].
Regarding licenses, there is considerable difference between the United States, where the licensing for election data is not seen as necessary nor desirable, in accordance with the understanding that government data are free as they are produced within the public domain, and European countries, where licenses are commonly used by the government to make the data available for everyone [12].
We decided to include the UK as well, since it only recently left the EU.
With regard to the reuse of OED, we rely on basic insights based on desk research and available benchmarks, since more systemic research should be conducted in that respect.
According to the Open Data Maturity Report for 2021, Croatia has been placed within the category of ‘followers’ (scoring 74–86 %), alongside with Finland, Sweden, Greece, Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania and Czech Republic. In relation to the previous year, this represents a decrease in open data maturity level, when Croatia’s score was ranked within the category of ‘fast-trackers’ [6]. More on open data in Croatia in [23].
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