The impact of natural hazards on Haiti’s 2010 presidential and legislative elections

This case study provides several lessons from Haiti's 2010 presidential and legislative elections that are likely to be applicable to other contexts. Voting in the first round of Haiti’s 2010 presidential and legislative elections took place on 28 November 2010, 10 months after the country had been hit by a Richter Scale-7 earthquake, 23 days after the passage of Hurricane Tomas and in the midst of a rapidly spiralling cholera epidemic.

The challenges faced by electoral administrators in holding Haiti’s 2010 elections were extreme. Even before the country was confronted with the effects of the compound disasters addressed in this case study, it was dealing with long-term societal and institutional problems that severely impeded electoral administration. The extent of these capacity limitations, the severity of the natural hazards and the scale of international assistance mean that Haiti’s experience of managing its 2010 elections is in many ways exceptional.