End of the war in BiH and beginning of construction of a democratic society and the strengthening of civil society as an important link in the social relations, there are also the first initiative for networking multiple organisations for a joint election observation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the time still organised by the OSCE and not of the domestic institutions.
NGO network “OKO” began to build from 1997, when the Centre of Civil Initiatives (CCI) started work on organising the first regional coalition in the regions of Banja Luka, Prijedor and Tuzla, bringing together for the municipal elections of 45 non-governmental organizations and recruiting 350 observers over a period of 2 days. For the 1998 elections CCI has established 4 regional coalitions (Tuzla, Banja Luka-Prijedor-Doboj, Mostar and Sarajevo), composed of 104 non-governmental organizations who were recruited over 2,400 people volunteer for election monitoring. The campaign activities of the Permanent electoral law in 1999 and formed a regional coalition of Una-Sana Canton.
For local and general elections in 2000, CCI organised campaign of civic monitoring of the election process across the country. In this campaign, the network “OKO” BiH, it includes a total of 310 associations of citizens, recruited more than 9,000 volunteer observers who covered the 2,600 polling stations, which at that time was more than 70% of all polling stations. The network “OKO” BiH in 2002 organized by observing the majority of Brac places ever before in BiH – 3683, covering with it and 148 of the Municipal Election Commission (MEC) and the same voter registration. Civil observers monitored the election process, election day and post-election processes. It is important to say that, since then given 12 specific recommendations (some of which are improving the process of accreditation of observers, the rights of observers, passive registration, the deadline for the publication and verification of results, solving the problem of financing the electoral process, etc.) To date fulfilled almost all.
After the 2002 local election monitoring in BiH no longer had earlier strong mass coalition approach, but to a greater extent been sporadic and ad hoc activity of certain organizations in the regions in which they operated. Civil society organizations have turned to other aspects of the electoral process in action – through advocacy towards the citizens and the authorities, initiatives to improve the electoral law, and the like.
At the last local elections in 2012, civil election observation returns to form a coalition through a network of organisations led by the LINK organization DON from Prijedor, with the main objective to create preconditions for increasing citizen participation in the election, election and post-election activities, and motivate people to get out and vote. The focus was therefore on election day, which is a sample of 14 municipalities and cities (Prijedor, Bijeljina, Center City and New Sarajevo Sarajevo, Livno, Trebinje, Foca, Kakanj, Zenica and Banja Luka, Gradiska, East Ilidza, Travnik, Tuzla ) was followed by 234 accredited civil observers. The submitted reports talked about the continuation of the earlier very negative practices of ignorance and irresponsibility towards the voters.
According to estimates by observers from 234 polling stations observed, only 20% of polling station committees did his job professionally and according to the instructions of the CEC. Established and lack of knowledge and a lot of irresponsibility in the pre-election period in which he conducted the recruitment and assessment of electoral committees. It was pointed out that the electoral committees in accordance with the Instruction on the determination of qualifications, number of members, the lottery process and appointment, training, assessment and certification of 7 members of committees and mobile teams were composed almost exclusively of members of political parties, and a number of the significant polling stations were deployed doctors, directors of public and private companies.
Coalition for Free and Fair Elections “Pod lupom” began long-term monitoring general elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on July 1, 2014, through the Head Office and 7 regional offices with 42 long-term observers in the field.
On election day they deployed 2,600 observers at 1,345 polling stations in 134 local electoral commissions, covering over 25% of the total number of polling stations. For the first time used the SMS reporting with automated software processing of the acquired data (on election day were received and sent over 19,000 text messages), and a comparison of the election results from a sample of polling stations compared to those published by the Central Election Commission (CEC).
