PRVT Methodology

National Election Watch’s (NEW’s) core mandate is to observe all public elections and provide to Sierra Leonean citizens, an independent and objective assessment of the processes and outcomes. For Sierra Leone’s 24th June 2023 elections, NEW employed the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT), an advanced and proven election monitoring methodology that allowed the coalition to independently and impartially assess the quality of voting and counting on election day, as well as the accuracy of official results of the Presidential elections announced by the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL).
The PRVT methodology is routinely used by citizen election observation organizations around the world.
More than 35 PRVTs have been conducted for national elections in 10 African countries, including recent elections in Nigeria (2023), Kenya (2022), and Côte d’Ivoire (2020).

This is not the first PRVT in Sierra Leone, NEW has employed the exact same methodology in the past, in 2007, 2012 and for both the first and second round Presidential elections in 2018.
The PRVT methodology is well known to EMBs in Sierra Leone and other political actors. In all previous instances when PRVT methodology has been deployed in Sierra Leone, including in 2018, the results of the PRVTs have been consistent with the announced elections results. In 2018 in particular, the NEW PRVT accurately projected the results of the first and second round of the presidential elections. These projections were well received by stakeholders, including political parties, the electoral commission and international community.

• 2 Jul 2023 NEW PRVT Methodology pdf (322kb) [ download ]