Media simulation - 4 participants

Two students are journalists and the other two are members of the EOM.


Journalists (Estabrook, Skjæveland)

You just unexpectedly came across members of the Election Observation Mission in your country. You
approach them and you would like to get as much information as possible on the observation the
mission has made so far. You know that these people will not be probably willing to share much
about the substance of their observation, however you politely insist. Try to formulate your
questions in a bit sophisticated way in order to increase your chance to trap that people and to
get an interesting piece of information you could use.


Mission members (Dolák, Iworima)

You are stopped by journalists while going from a meeting. Even if you rather avoided the
interview, you know that it is always better for the reputation of the mission to be as transparent
as possible for the media. You agree with the interview, but you know that you have to be careful
with what you share with journalists. The journalists asks you quite insistently, but you need to
find a way both to answer their questions and respect the code of conduct.


Power cut simulation – 5 participants

One STO team is deployed in XYZ country. The country is rather underdeveloped and there is usually
no electricity in the polling stations. It is all right during the day while voting, but later in
the evening during the counting of the votes, it is becoming a challenge as it gets dark. For this
purpose, the polling staff is equipped with a small lamp which unfortunately stopped working. There
is no light in the polling station and the commission cannot proceed with their work. The polling
staff approaches the STO team and asks them for advice. On the top of that, one of the commission
members noticed that you have a torch with you. One domestic observer tries to convince the team as
well.


Polling staff (Banerjee, Gergelčíková)

You try to convince the STO team to help you to be able to continue the procedure smoothly. You can
try to be emotional in order to convince the team, but do not forget to make use of factual
arguments.


STO team (El Aoudati, Smith)

Personally, you would like to help the commission to fix the problem. At the same time, you know
that you cannot interfere in the process. You feel sorry for them and you do not want to have an
argument with them.


Domestic observer (Castrillón Levoyer)

You don’t understand why the STO team doesn’t want to help the polling staff. You don’t have any
extra light with you, but if you had, you would definitely try to help them.


Election fraud simulation – 5 participants

One STO team observes directly an election fraud on the e-day. Just few meters from the polling
station the team just visited, a vote buying was taking place. The team saw very clearly that
several voters were paid off against a picture of their ballot. A group of people responsible for
that was located just around the corner of the polling station and was not even hiding that
practice. With such clear evidence, the team reports immediately to the core team (election
analyst, political analyst and the head of the mission). However, the core team is reluctant to
publish this information in the preliminary statement since it was the only polling station in the
country where this practice was reported by the OSCE/ODIHR observers.


Observers (Corovic, Maiettová)

Your goal is to convince the core team to take this issue seriously into account, even if it was
the only place where voting buying was observed and it was not probably a pattern in the country,
but rather a separate initiative of local party supporters. You would like to, ideally, see this
incident mentioned in the preliminary statement issued the day after the elections.


Core team (Gedik, Roa)

You understand that your colleagues are concerned with what they observed. At the beginning, you
are quite skeptical about their observation, they might have understood the whole situation
wrongly. At the same time, you still kind of feel that the issue is serious to be just simple
omitted. After a while, you decide to consult the head of the mission.


Head of the mission (Scherbakova)

You are also reluctant to publish such information in the preliminary statement. As a former
successful politician, you prefer diplomatic and smooth solutions and this would probably trigger
further discussion with the OSCE/ODIHR HQ in Warsaw. You know that Warsaw does not want to be too
tough since the country has shown already a huge improvement during these elections and for one
single incident, you don’t want to damage the whole picture.


Difficult interlocutor simulation – 4 participants

An LTO team meets representatives of a political party in their region in order to discuss their
campaign strategy to reach the voters. This party is known for its anti-Western approach and
associates automatically the OSCE/ODIHR mission with the EU, NATO and all their struggle against
this direction within their country. The party representative verbally attacks the mission members,
saying that the OSCE, as well as EU or NATO, has never helped them with anything and only disrupted
the country.


Party representatives (Strand, Mammadov)

You simply want to show the OSCE/ODIHR mission members that you don’t like them. You receive them
for a meeting since you feel obliged, but you don’t trust them and don’t want to share any
information with them. Your party is strongly against the EU and the NATO integration and for you,
all these people are the same.


Observers (Dostál, Scekic)

You expect that this particular party will not receive you in a friendly way, but their
confrontational reactions still surprise you. However, you don’t want to be dragged into emotional
confrontation. You would like to explain these people what the benefits of the election observation
are, but at the same time, that not all problems of their country can be resolved externally by
your organization.