How do I find what I need?
Welcome to the IFES F. Clifton White Virtual Resource Center (VRC)! Thousands of election-related materials from the past two decades are now online and at your fingertips. All collections will be continuously updated as IFES adds new reports and publications. There are two ways to search the VRC database: Basic Search and Advanced Search.
Basic Search: Simply put a term into the Search This Project box above. Choose from the IFES topic list below or use terms of your own. All materials have been tagged with relevant Topics from the list.
Topic list:
Civic Education
Civil Society
Constitutional Law
Democracy Assistance
Election Ballots
Election Disputes
Election Law
Election Management
Election Observation
Election Procedures
Elections
Electoral Systems
Financial Disclosure
Gender Issues |
Governance
Legal Framework
People with Disabilities
Political Finance
Political Parties
Post-conflict
Public Funding
Public Opinion
Rule of Law
Voter Registration
Voter Turnout
Voting Technology
Youth and Elections |
Advanced Search: For a more refined search, you can define exact phrases, search only a certain country or year, or use other combinations of criteria. Advanced Search filters include the following:
- Division/Project (make sure to enter Virtual Resource Center here if you want only VRC results)
- Country
- Language
- Document type (Reports, Civic Education, Election Laws, Constitutions, Ballots – see descriptions below)
- Date range
- Topics (note that laws and constitutions do not have assigned topics that can be searched)
- Text search (use the filters to find an exact phrase, all or some of the words you are looking for;)
If using Advanced Search, it is very important that you filter your search by selecting ‘Virtual Resource Center’ in the Division/Project box. This will ensure that the search returns only items in the VRC collection.
Current document types:
- Reports: IFES stores all country reports, white papers, project reports, issue papers, etc. online. The VRC scanning project allowed IFES to add older reports. Reports are available from all years since IFES’s founding in 1987;
- Civic education: IFES has collected civic education materials from around the world. This collection includes flyers, posters, brochures, maps, stickers, t-shirt logos, training manuals, student textbooks, teacher guides, and more.
Document types that will be available soon:
- Constitutions: A collection of national constitutions both historical and current.
- Election laws: A collection of national constitutions both historical and current.
- Ballots: A collection of national constitutions both historical and current.
- Additional posters: IFES is still adding historical posters to its civic education collection.
- Videos: IFES will add videos from past and present projects as possible.