the electoral period. The rest of this section is essentially dedicated to the conditions of the association of security forces with the electoral process. 3.4.1 The role of security forces in elections From the foregoing, it is obvious that the electoral process has an important security dimension and that a good part of the threats regarding security during elections can be considerably reduced by the appropriate involvement of security forces. Once this state of affairs is recognized, the question which then arises is its operational aspect, that is, the concrete implementation of the participation of security agents for the prevention and management of security issues during elections. One important is: which tasks can be assigned to the public security agents in securing elections? To respond to this question, one needs to determine the threats to which each stage of the electoral process is exposed. The activities in question vary from territorial demarcation to the management of disputes and the announcement of result, to the establishment of the electoral roll, the creation of awareness among voters, the registration of candidates, and the management of electoral campaigns. In order to answer the above question, it is necessary to identify the potential security risks for each type of activity during the electoral process and deduce the positive role that security forces can play from them. The electoral legislations of the sub-region do not provide for the question of the association of security forces in election management. In most of the laws, there is only a simple allusion to the fact that the electoral commission can resort to security forces any time it deems this necessary. However, there are certain cases where the law has gone further and others where it has remained rather silent. 194