The National Democratic Institute was founded in the early 1980s in Washington, D.C., as part of four different non-governmental agencies, one linked to the U.S. Democratic Party, one to the U.S. Republican Party, one to the U.S. body representing organized labour and one to a body broadly representing U.S. business interests.
NDI would work in countries around the world, usually countries coming out of civil conflict, to build new democracies. My specialty in those areas was that I would work on election-related programs for campaigns and training of scrutineers, which the Americans call polling agents, working with parties on internal party elections.