The Legal Necessities of the Guardian Council’s Supervisory Role in Elections with Emphasis on Challenges and Opportunities
Keywords:
Elections, Guardian Council, General Election Policies, Challenges and Opportunities, IranAbstract
Today, elections, as one of the fundamental components of the right to self-determination, play a significant role in the relationship between the state and the nation. In all countries, a specific and lawful institution is designated to supervise, control, and ensure the proper conduct of elections; however, such institutions are often confronted with numerous challenges and opportunities that must be identified and examined. Accordingly, the present study, adopting a descriptive-analytical method and relying on the requirements stipulated in the General Election Policies, investigates the legal necessities of the Guardian Council’s supervisory role in elections, with an emphasis on challenges and opportunities. The findings of this study indicate that despite the general conformity of the existing legal framework with the General Election Policies and the existence of opportunities such as adherence to the important principles of ensuring the integrity and freedom of elections, securing maximum public participation, safeguarding the rights of candidates and voters, maintaining complete impartiality, facilitating the presence of candidates or their representatives throughout all stages of the electoral process, and providing written responses regarding the reasons for disqualification, significant challenges still remain. These challenges include difficulties in verifying the qualifications of electoral candidates, ambiguities in qualification approval and disqualification procedures, issues related to the timing of candidates’ electoral campaigns, and the lack of national education and public information dissemination. Therefore, it appears that election law suffers from deficiencies and shortcomings in various electoral processes, making it necessary for the supervisory institution, in overseeing all stages of elections, to take these principles and indicators into consideration and to incorporate the necessary legal rules, regulations, and mechanisms for their more effective implementation within the legislative processes related to elections.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Amin Sargazi (Author); Askar Jalalian; Seyed Hossein Sadeghi (Author)
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