In March 2022, the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections “Pod lupom” submitted 92,000 signatures of citizens to the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH for the introduction of new technologies in the electoral process. It took only 2 weeks for the citizens of BiH to sign the petition on the streets of 74 cities and municipalities across BiH, while online signing lasted a little bit longer.
We are convinced that the number of citizens who signed the petition would be even higher, taking into account everything that happened over the course of the General Elections held on October 02, this year. Distrust in the election process, recorded election frauds, irregularities and abuses, discrepancies in the results during the control counting, as well as waiting for election results for 30 days following Election Day in the 21st century, simply requires new technologies to be introduced into the election process. No excuses.
92,000 citizens of BiH by signing the petition supported:
- Electronic identification of voters at polling stations
- Introduction of “machines” to scan ballots at polling stations
Research has shown that the vast majority of citizens are insufficiently informed about what new technologies mean in the electoral process, but after the 2022 General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina the majority of the public realized that something must be done. Proven election fraud, illegal opening of bags containing ballot papers, errors in entering voting results, etc. etc., further compromised the electoral system and reduced citizens’ trust in it. The lowest turnout in the elections since 2004 is also proofing all what have been above stated. Therefore, new technologies are necessary in order to restore citizens’ trust in elections as a “holiday of democracy”.
What do the new technologies advocated by the Coalition “Pod lupom” mean?
New technologies will introduce electronic identification of voters at polling stations and the scanning of ballots at the polling station by voters.
What exactly is it about and how will these two novelties advance the elections?
Electronic identification of voters at polling stations aims to prevent abuses during identifying voters in such a way as to make it impossible to vote on behalf of another person, to vote more than once by the same person, to misuse voters’ personal documents and unused ballots after the polling stations are closed. It implies the introduction of readers of unique barcodes from valid identification documents to identify voters at the polling station (identity card, passport or driver’s license) as well as screens facing the observers on which the image of the voter accessing the identification appears. Alternatively, the introduction of fingerprint readers to identify voters at the polling station can be considered, along with screens facing the observers on which appears the image of the voter accessing the identification.
The “machine” to scan ballots, or simply the “scanner”, will prevent changes to the voting results and voting instead of those who did not vote on Election Day, i.e., misuse of unused ballots, nullification of valid ballots and adding the preferences within the list, and will enable post-election control and analysis by the election administration and election observers. In this way, it will contribute to increasing the transparency of the electoral process and restoring citizens’ trust in the elections. It is important to know that the introduction of scanners will not change the way in which voters vote and which is currently applying and which voters are already accustomed to. So, the voter will vote in the same way he/she did before that is to say in the voting booth, then instead of inserting the ballots directly into the ballot box, the voter “inserts” his/her ballot into the scanner which archives it both, electronically and physically.
The machine may contain software that automatically records the results of voting on that ballot, which means that there is a possibility to publish the preliminary results of the election immediately after the closing of the polling stations based on the records obtained from the software. Paper ballots would still be counted manually at the polling station after closing and the results would be confirmed if the results recorded by the software and the results determined by the Polling Station Commission match. If the results do not match, the CEC BiH would re-count the ballots in the Main Counting Center and, based on an overview of all election materials and software results, would confirm the final election results. Alternatively, instead of software, the machine can only scan (photograph) the ballot without the ability to count votes, but all scanned ballots would be archived on the machine’s memory, which would allow additional inspection and control of the results.
Taking into account all of the above stated electoral irregularities, as well as the fact that the voting results in the 2022 General Elections were announced almost a month following the Election Day, new election technologies would prevent the same scenario from happening again, and would return trust in democracy to the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We simply may not conduct the 2024 Local Elections in the same way we did it up to date. We must all together insist to introduce improvements that will protect the electoral will of voters, whatever that will may be.
Support the Coalition “Pod lupom” in our efforts to secure these improvements by signing the petition.
