AWARDS: Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy Wins at International Electoral Awards

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13.10.2025
AWARDS: Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy Wins at International Electoral Awards
By Joe Mathews

Forum Wins for Civic Engagement; Sri Lanka, Somaliland, and the Philippines Take Home Top Awards

Democracy International's Caroline Vernaillen and the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy took home a top award for civic engagement in the world during the International Electoral Awards, held in Gaborone, Botswana, on October 2.

Vernaillen, who led the organizing of the most recent Global Forum in Bucharest in 2024,  invited the crowd to the next Global Forum, taking place in Gaborone Oct. 8-11, 2026.

Sri Lanka took home the award for best electoral management body, and George Erwin M. Garcia of the Philippines was named election commissioner of the year. The National Election Commission of Somaliland, an independent but largely unrecognised country in East Africa, was a popular winner of an award for Transparent Election Management.

Caroline Vernaillen accepts Civic Engagement award for the Global Forum at International Electoral Awards on October 4, 2025, in Gaborone, Botswana
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Joe Mathews is founder and publisher of Democracy Local, a planetary publication dedicated to stories, ideas, data, and questions about everyday people governing themselves. He is a Future of Democracy fellow at the Berggruen Institute. For Democracy Local and other outlets, he writes the Democracy Column.  Based in Los Angeles, Joe is best known as author of the popular syndicated Connecting California column at Zocalo Public Square, where he is also democracy editor. He is also author of three books; The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy (2006); The California Crackup (2010) and The California Recall: Its First 20 Years (2023). He has served as co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy; as a reporter for the LA Times, Baltimore Sun and Wall Street Journal; as board member of Democracy International; as a professor of practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University; and a youth baseball coach.