Internships: Democracy Program

The Democracy Program’s election observation activities focus on countries that are undergoing transitional elections, emerging from conflict, and/or at risk of backsliding in their democratization process. As of January 2020, the Democracy Program has monitored 110 elections in 39 countries, including recent missions in Tunisia, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone, as well as two Native American nations.

Expected Projects

• Provide country research and political analysis, and briefing materials as needed
• Provide in-country support on/around Election Day
• Backstop and support implementation of election observation missions (EOMs)
• Support tablet and database system used in election observation data gathering and analysis
• Provide logistics supporting preparing for international EOMs

The Democracy Program currently provides long-term support to civil society partner organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Tunisia, Myanmar, and Honduras to bolster their ability to foster credible elections, promote equal political participation, expose corruption, and promote confidence in democratic processes and institutions. These projects provide technical and financial assistance to partner organizations to conduct citizen observation projects while strengthening their development. In between election cycles, citizen observation organizations can apply knowledge and resources developed during election observation work to advocate for electoral reform. Such activities could include supporting increased youth engagement, monitoring violence against women in elections (VAWE) and women’s participation, political transition monitoring, traditional and social media monitoring, conflict and electoral violence tracking, strengthening the participation of marginalized groups, assessing the quality of key parts of the electoral process, and reporting to international human rights bodies.

Expected Projects

• Support democratic consolidation and civil society building projects
• Provide country research and political analysis as needed
• Support Democracy Program staff providing technical and administrative support to in country offices; this could include assistance on financial procedures and logistics support.

Considering the evolving and critical risks posed by social media to electoral integrity, the Carter Center's Democracy Program has launched a new project on "Digital Threats to Democracy." This cutting-edge project seeks to engage civil society partners in priority countries as we develop social media monitoring methodologies and tools to assess and mitigate incitement and hate speech, dis/misinformation, online harassment, bot activity, and more. The project will consider a range of issues, such as content moderation policies, proposals for government regulations of social media, and impacts on humanitarian crises. The Digital Threats Project seeks interns with expertise outside of the traditional social sciences; experience in coding, data analysis, and data visualization is highly valued.