CIVIL: Election administration caused greatest number of irregularities

CIVIL’s second post-election report

CIVIL – Center for Freedom prepared a report on the irregularities from the election monitoring and submitted it to the State Election Commission on October 17, at 5:00 pm. It is just a report, and not a complaint, since civil society organizations are not authorized to submit complaints, only submitters of candidate lists and citizens can do so. Nevertheless, CIVIL is submitting a report to the SEC within the legal deadline, in hope that this institution will act according to its competencies and based on our information, will take appropriate steps within the framework of the law. Such a thing did not happen at last year’s elections.

CIVIL carried out a strict selection and verification of over 240 processed reports on election irregularities submitted to the organization’s Coordination Body for Elections on the day of the election silence and on the day of the voting. The analytical team set apart a total of 199 reports in which there are testimonies for violation of the election silence, for threats and pressures, unlawful conduct of an Election Board, problems with the Voters Register, family and group voting, violation of the secrecy of voting, overstepping power, vote-buying and violence.

Table 1

n-number of reports from the ground

According to CIVIL’s statistics, the greatest number of irregularities are registered in the category “Unlawful conduct of Election Board”, that is, 28.14%. In six cases, accredited observers have been involved in some kind of election irregularity on election day, voters have been involved in 14.54% of the reports submitted on election irregularities, and two cases of violence have also been recorded.

The category “Other” in Table 2 consists of 44 cases of problems with the election material, such as the number and quality of the ballots, the non-functioning of UV lamps, inaccessibility to polling stations, the poor set-up of voting booths for people with disabilities, and many other problems that are directly related with the poor performances of the election administration, as well as of the SEC and the municipal election commissions.

On the other hand, as it was also stressed at CIVIL’s press conferences during election day, and at the press conference immediately after election day, a large part of the Election Boards were forced to show quite a bit of creativity and much patients in order to implement the elections. They were cutting ballots with scissors, they were standing in front of ballot boxed in order to explain to voters where to put their ballots, because the ballots were with similar colors and were not very clear, there were pens that were not working, UV lamps not working, they had to count all the ballots and many other procedures.

After so many implemented election processes and even though it should be a routine preparation, this time the SEC prepared election material that was a serious challenge to everyone, but mostly for the voters and the election boards.

However, many Election Boards did not carry out their tasks according to the procedures and the law. More specifically, in CIVIL’s system for entering reports from the ground, in terms of the question “Who caused the irregularity?”, the election administration is most often the cause. As much as 121 reports indicate the election administration (from the SEC and up to the election boards) as responsible for the irregularities, or 60.80% of the reports submitted to the SEC.

Once again, as in previous election processes, our observers note that certain members or heads of Election Boards seriously violate the procedures and the Electoral Code. Some are noted propagating or cooperating with party headquarters in mobilizing voters. Also, in several cases, noted by CIVIL’s observers, they violate the voting right by marking voters inappropriately with spray, only to find out afterwards that they do not figure on the Voters Register at that polling station, leaving those voters unable to vote at the appropriate place.

Some members of the Election Boards make unacceptable mistakes also because of their lack of knowledge of the procedures. CIVIL also alerted before the elections that the SEC and the Municipal Election Commissions provide insufficient quality of training for the members of the election boards, as opposed to the long and expensive preparations of the educational material (video, manuals…).

In CIVIL’s pre-election report, among else, it also said that: “The Municipal Election Commissions who were supposed to train the members of the Election Boards, did not pay enough attention to the training. We think that thirty minutes are not enough, of which the first ten minutes are a brief presentation, followed by a video projection from which the members of the Election Boards come to knowledge, namely, instructions on what they are supposed to do on the day of the voting. This is not enough, and again we will come to a situation in which the members of the Election Boards will have to violate the procedures and the law even unintentionally, because they do not have enough information”.

In regards to the right to vote, this was violated at these elections as well in several hundred cases, when some citizens were unable to exercise their fundamental human right – the right to vote.

CIVIL’s pre-election report alarmed that “We have 120 cases of ‘missing’ voters from the Voters Register. We see many indicative and symptomatic examples that the State Election Commission, that is, the administration is failing to meet the demands of the citizens”.

Furthermore, CIVIL criticized the arrogance of the institutions with the conclusion:

“Since we have already seen an example, that is, a legal precedent, when in a time of an election process, contrary to the principles and standards, the law is changed, even the very structure of the State Election Commission is changed, then resources and time could have been found for solving the problem of the citizens who on election day will perhaps not be able to find themselves on the Voters Register. There is no need to go too far, it is enough to take a look at the Croatian experiences and to see that citizens can easily be ensured the right to vote. We anticipated that on election day we would have many such complaints when people will simply be powerless. It is a violation of human rights and violation of the law. Even one such case will be a serious violation of fundamental human rights.

Those anticipations have come true.

Political party activists acted as if party action during election silence was not prohibited. They simply did not stop with the campaign and there are also cases of party pressures and threats, agitation, mobilization and transporting voters, along with vote-buying. We highlight the case where party activists were noticed putting up posters on one of the main streets in the Municipality of Butel.

Table 2

According to the previous experience in CIVIL’s election monitoring, election irregularities were expected in Aerodrom, which after all came true. In the first report, CIVIL indicates 22 cases of election irregularities precisely in this municipality. These cases refer to unlawful conduct of the election administration, of the parties and party activists, family and group voting…In Kumanovo fourteen cases of election irregularities have been registered, most of which for unlawful conduct of Election Boards, family and group voting and problems with the Voters Register.

Table 3 shows the number of election irregularities by municipalities. CIVIL notes that this is data from 199 adopted reports from the ground. The remaining reports are being processed, but a serious change in the final statistics is not expected.  In the meanwhile, CIVIL is publishing separate reports from the ground that speak about election irregularities in detail.

Table 3

According to the methodology adopted by CIVIL, everything that is received as a report from the ground is processed and immediately published through the media platform CIVIL Media and is available for the public, which means that CIVIL’s reports are constantly updated with new data and give a detailed and comprehensive picture of the process.

Prepared by: Biljana Jordanovska, Emilija Baltovska