The Mission.

The Commission will review the voting procedures proposed by the proponents of the referendum and offer suggestions on how to improve the process in order to ensure the voting is free, fair, and transparent as possible. The Commission will also work with the proponents of the referendum to create a transparent and secure method for the Commission to tabulate the results and independently announce them once the voting has been completed in its entirety. It is important to note that the proponents of the referendum will be setting the dates and locations for the voting to be held, establish voter registration procedures, conduct the voter registration as well as conduct the actual voting.

Upon the completion of the voting, the Commission will issue a report reviewing how the voting was conducted and how it compares to votes on similar referendums.

Since this is a non-governmental referendum and as a consequence the proponents of the referendum have limited resources, the voting will likely not be as compliant with international standards as possible given the limitations. However, what is critical to the success of any referendum is that the international community, regardless of their views on the underlying claims of a referendum, judge it in its entirety and not lose sight of the goal of the vote, and that of most referendums, that a peaceful resolution is of greater moral value than violence.

It is also important to note that the participation by the individuals in this Commission does not in any way constitute support for the referendum nor does it take a position on Sikhs for Justice or any of their underlying claims or activities. The members of the Commission made the decision to be involved because of our collective belief that given the current state of world affairs that there will be a growing number of efforts by individuals and groups around the world to seek independence through official and non-governmental referendums and as experts on direct democracy we want to help by establishing internationally recognized norms and procedures to ensure the free, fair and transparent voting while exercising their right to self-determination.

The Members

Commission members have collectively over 125 years of global experience with direct democracy and best practices – research and writing, ballot campaigns, drafting implementing direct democracy legislation, advising on the proper rules and procedures to ensure the legitimacy of an initiative or referendum, and election monitoring.

M. Dane Waters. Commission Chair.

Dane has worked on six continents providing strategic advice to campaigns, governments, activists, academic institutions, and NGO’s. He has also consulted on projects with the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State, and the International Republican Institute. He was a political appointee in President George H. W. Bush’s administration and has worked on five U.S. presidential campaigns as well as presidential and prime ministerial campaigns around the world. Dane is one of the few people who has worked on all aspects of direct democracy campaigns – from helping governments draft the laws that will govern the election, to helping win or defeat an issue on the ballot, to providing international observers to ensure that a referendum election meets internationally accepted norms.  

Dane is the founder and Chair of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California – a research and educational organization established to study direct democracy.  He is the co-founder of the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe and serves on the board of Democracy International, an organization that works to strengthen direct democracy opportunities around the world and Citizens in Charge Foundation.  Dane has authored and edited numerous articles and books on direct democracy and has provided commentary on governance issues to newspapers, radio talk shows, and television stations around the world.

Paul Jacob.

Paul is a leading national figure in initiative and referendum and is president of Citizens in Charge and Citizens in Charge Foundation. Paul has worked on over 100 initiative and ballot access campaigns in nearly every state. An acclaimed multi-media commentator, Paul hosts an online, radio, and print opinion program, Common Sense, which reaches a growing list of over 15,000 e-mail subscribers and is aired daily by more than 150 stations in 48 states.

Bruno Kaufmann.

Bruno is the Global Democracy Correspondent at the Swiss Broadcasting Company and has covered elections and referendums around the world for more than 30 years. Trained as a political scientist Bruno has been assessing initiative and referendum legislation globally and published many books, guides, and recommendations on the issue.

Back home in Sweden Bruno Kaufmann served as Chairman of the Election & Democracy Commission in the city of Falun and is currently member of a national commission to review the electoral system. Bruno is the President of the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe and Director of International Cooperation at the Swiss Democracy Foundation. He co-chairs the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy and is the author of the „Global Passport to Modern Direct Democracy“.

Cynthia Warde.

Cynthia is the cofounder and Managing Director of CD Global Associates, a full service personal and professional advisory firm that specializes in solving the complex challenges facing governments, NGOs, companies, and individuals. Based in Beirut, DC, and London, the majority owned women business puts to work Cynthia’s  almost two decades of experience in private banking and investments, real estate, event creation and management, public relations, and politics.

She began her career as a trader and private banker for Libano-Francaise Finance (BLF Group) where she worked on opening new markets both in Lebanon and the GCC countries. She put this financial experience to work when she opened Homebook, a private real estate firm. As a real estate executive, she brought a new way of working with clients through a very personalized approach which resulted in closing millions of dollars in real estate transactions.

In 2012 she founded In Action Events which created and managed successful events in Lebanon and other GCC countries including Lebanon’s largest annual Christmas celebration - Christmas In Action. She also developed and executed fundraising events for numerous NGOs as well as partnered with commercial clients to build their brand and increase their client base.

In 2019, as revolution and protests began to grip her home country of Lebanon, she made the commitment to devote her efforts to finding solutions to the complex political, social, and economic issues Lebanon and the region faced which culminated in her establishing CD Global Associates. At the core of what drives her is that the solutions for Lebanon and the challenges facing the world can be solved through greater empowerment of the people, especially women, and through increasing economic opportunities and political activism.

Her involvement as a member of Lebanese League for Women in Business and the Women Leaders Council of Lebanon, is a testament to her commitment to ensuring that women reach their full potential in business and politics in Lebanon.

Cynthia is also active in charity work and NGOs as a board member of ART IN MOTION, event committee member for Children Cancer Center of Lebanon, fundraising committee member of Brave Heart.

She holds a BA in Economics and Commercial Sciences from Université Saint Joseph - USJ, a Master’s in Management and Finance from Ecole Supérieure des Affaires - ESA and received her Corporate Directors Certification from the IFC-World Bank.

Dr. Yanina Welp.

Yanina is Research Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy. Between 2008 and 2018 she has been principal researcher at the Centre for Democracy Studies and co-director of the Zurich Latin American Centre (2016-2019), both at the University of Zurich. Her main areas of study are the introduction and practices of mechanisms of direct and participatory democracy, and digital media and politics, i.e. ‘democratic innovations’. She has published extensively on these topics in academic journals and books. Her last edited book is The Politics of Recall Elections (with Laurence Whitehead, 2020, Palgrave). 

In terms of knowledge transfer, she has worked with many public institutions in given advise and or observing processes of citizen’s participation. Examples include electoral institutes from Mexico (Instituto Nacional Electoral and Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación), Mexico City (Instituto Electoral del Distrito Federal) and Nueva León (Comisión Electoral del Estado de Nueva León); the ombudsman of Montevideo (Defensoría del Vecino); the Institute of Democracy in Ecuador (Instituto de la Democracy); and the National Jury of Elections (Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, JNE) and the National Office of Electoral Procesess (ONPE) in Peru. She has experience in working with international organizations. For instance, at the invitation of International IDEA, she has been a consultant for the Chilean Government (October 2015 and January 2016) in relation to proposed constitutional changes towards democratic participation; and has participated in the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) to observe the referendums in Bolivia (February 21, 2016) and Ecuador (February 4, 2018), among others.

Matt Qvortrup.

Educated at Brasenose College, University of Oxford Matt QVORTRUP DPhil (Oxon), is Professor of Political Science at Coventry University. A Qualified lawyer, he is adjunct professor of political theory at The American University of Rome. Matt has previously held professorial positions at The London School of Economics and University College, London, and has been a visiting professor at Sorbonne, Paris. Described by the BBC as ‘the world’s leading expert on referendums”, and by the Financial Times as “a world authority” on the subject, he has writer several books, including Government by Referendum (2017), Referendums Around the World (Palgrave 2016), and Referendums and Ethnic Conflict (2014), and A Comparative Study of Referendums (2002).

In addition to his distinguished academic career, Professor has served on several boards and commissions. He began his career as an advisor to the British Government in the late 1990s, and has served in other positions including as an envoy for the US State Department in Sudan (2009), as a chief advisor for the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee (2015), as an expert member on a commission overseeing the 2019 referendum in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, and as counsellor on the regulation of referendums for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2019-2020.  Matt Qvortrup gained prominence when he correctly predicted the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendums three months before the vote.