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Andrew Goddard writes: Election processes are of limited interest to most people but it is a matter of serious concern when they go wrong. This is especially the case if they are important elections such as those with an impact on who will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. 

On the basis of the process followed in electing the Canterbury Diocese’s Vacancy-in-See Committee (ViSC), this article sets out the following 13 tips on how not to run an election, illustrating each of them from that recent important election. These tips cover a wide range of areas in the election process: 

election timing (Tip 1), 
election rules (Tips 2-5), 
who needs to be elected (Tips 6 & 7), 
who can be elected (Tips 8 & 9), 
who is on the ballot paper (Tips 10 & 11), 
how many votes are needed to be elected (Tip 12), and 
what information is given about the election result (Tip 13).
Call the election under severe time pressure and against good practice, by extraordinary means, if possible in the context of confusion and errors in relation to recent previous elections.
Change the rules for running the election while the election is underway.
In those rule changes institute new rules that go against clearly stated good practice and ensure that in so doing the new rules also fail to provide sufficient guidance as to how to run the election given the new rules.
Make up—but never declare or explain—a new rule to fill the gap in the rules and make sure it ignores the wishes of the voters in determining how to count the votes.
Be willing to ignore some of the public rules in how you run the election and also add in some distinctive rules of your own which are not public.
Fail properly to ascertain how many candidates should be elected.
Give the voters misleading information about how many candidates they need to elect. 
Rule as ineligible for election people who were eligible when the election was called and nominations opened, ideally these candidates should belong to under-represented groups.
Rule candidates out of being elected on the basis of a novel characteristic for which they have no responsibility, which they cannot easily change, which they may not even be aware applied to them until it was too late and nominations closed and were made public, and which opens up a path of malevolent manipulation on the part of opponents.
Add to the ballot paper those known to be ineligible for election but do not make clear on the ballot paper they are ineligible or what you will do with any first preference votes cast for them.
Also include on the ballot paper all candidates who will be elected unopposed to give voters the impression that they need their vote in order to be elected and do not make clear what you will do with any first preference votes they receive even though they do not need them.
Do not at any stage in the process make clear how many votes a candidate needs in order to be elected.
Refuse to publish the result sheet showing on what basis people were elected despite being required to do so by the rules. This will make it impossible for anyone to tell if rules were broken, how new rules were implemented, and whether any of this changed the outcome of the election thus giving grounds for an appeal.