Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on elections around the world.

The coronavirus has taken a heavy toll on our lives, our economies, our societies, but also on electoral processes around the world,

with many elections being postponed in order to protect citizens' health.

But this involves a delicate balancing act between ensuring the democratic right to vote

and a government's responsibility to protect public health. So what can we learn from experience?

Stay with us.

It's difficult to organize and hold an election with the social distancing conditions imposed

by most countries in order to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

We agree on that.

This is why since the start of the coronavirus crisis, many governments with elections on the horizon faced a difficult dilemma.

To press on with their election calendar, while putting in place measures to protect the health of citizens

or to postpone them in line with legal safeguards.

International human rights law allows for electoral processes to be altered during a situation of emergency

as long as the restrictions are legal, necessary, proportional to the emergency and temporary.

But the choice is not an obvious one, as both options entail risks that need to be carefully considered.

For example, holding elections in a country severely affected by the

pandemic can have serious effects on the turnout. Postponing an election, on the other hand,

can lead to a loss of democratic control over government representatives for a period of time.

And decision makers need to take a whole lot of legal, technical and sanitary parameters into account,

as well as constitutional arrangements to ensure that democratic institutions function as they would in normal circumstances

and that people's rights and freedoms are upheld. What's clear is that, no matter what the choice is,

a broad consensus amongst political forces, both in government and in the opposition,

...