Elections, Referendums and Political Parties
The Council for Democratic Elections (CDE) is made up of representatives of the Venice Commission, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The aim of the Council for Democratic Elections is to ensure co-operation in the electoral field between the Venice Commission as a legal body and the Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress of the Council of Europe as political bodies in charge of election observation, in order to promote the European common values in this field – the principles of the European electoral heritage.
The Commission identifies and develops standards in the area of elections through:
- Codes of good practice on elections, on referendums and on political parties
- Opinions - mostly joint ones with OSCE/ODIHR - on electoral legislation
- Workshops for Central Election Commissions (CEC) and Courts
- Assistance missions to CECs and legal advice to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)
- “Vota” database of electoral legislation
Read more about this topic: Venice Commission
Famous quotes containing the words political parties, political and/or parties:
“All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.”
—John Arbuthnot (1667–1735)
“Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)