Physical voting at embassies, vote counting at municipal counting centers, and voting for 10 candidates.
These are just some of the new practices that were established with the new Law on General Elections and that were implemented for the first time in the February 9 elections in Kosovo, writes KosovaPress.
But were these changes worth it? The CEC has the announcement of the results on its agenda. The Democratic Institute of Kosovo considers that the new Law on Elections has not produced any concrete results in the administration of the electoral process. According to researcher Vullnet Bugaqku, the CEC has failed to administer the process of counting votes for candidates, writes A2 CNN.
"We are witnesses that this year when we had regular parliamentary elections, the new legal changes have not produced any concrete results or the CEC has not shown any efficiency in administering the electoral process, especially in addressing the process of counting votes for candidates in Municipal Centers and CNR. The CEC has failed to administer the process of counting votes for candidates and we are witnesses that a phenomenon has emerged that despite the legal changes that we can produce, if the counting process physically passes through the hands of commissioners, manipulation or suspicions about the manipulation of the results are necessarily manifested, whether by political parties or by candidates for deputies," says Bugaqku.
CEC spokesperson Valmir Elezi says that after the entire process is completed, the impacts of the legal changes will also be analyzed.
"After each electoral process, the CEC discusses and analyzes the progress of the organization of the entire electoral process, in order to make the necessary improvements where there were shortcomings. Also, as an institution that implements the Law on General Elections, the impacts of legal changes in relation to the organizational aspects of the electoral process will be analyzed," he says.
Elezi adds that the CEC still does not have the final cost, as the process has not yet been completed.
"We can still only talk about the budget planned by the Central Election Commission for the organization of the electoral process, which is worth more than 8 million 700 thousand euros. The elections have not yet been concluded, which means that in order to know exactly how much the organization of this entire electoral process will cost, we must wait for its completion and all other procedures," adds Elezi.
The new law on general elections - adopted in mid-2023 - allowed for the first time 10 candidates to be voted for, up from 5 in the past. For the first time, physical voting was also organized in 30 diplomatic missions of Kosovo in 19 countries, as well as postal voting in mailboxes opened by the CEC in 22 different countries around the world.
Elections in Kosovo - the first regular ones since the declaration of independence in 2008 - were held on February 9, after a month-long election campaign. (A2 Televizion)
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