PSG Urges Plan for Election Day and Three Days After
Aleksandar Radovanovic of the Free Citizens Movement says the plan for election day and the three days after voting must be built now, while the election deadline stands at three months at most.
Secretary General of the Free Citizens Movement (PSG), Aleksandar Radovanovic, said on August 11 that opposition figures should already be planning their strategy for election day, one that also covers the three days after polling stations close. In a statement to the daily newspaper Danas, he said election day is the most important test for political organizations, but that attention also has to go to what happens after the voting.
This is the first concrete proposal from an opposition party on how election day itself should be organized, since Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic capped the deadline at three months at most and said the vote would decide “the fate and future of the country.” Until now, opposition statements have focused mainly on the date of the election and on the makeup of candidate lists.
“If we all agree that political actors are in the starting blocks for the election, then we should already be developing strategies both for election day and for the three days after it, which in previous years were the key period for defending the results and uncovering every instance of election manipulation,” Radovanovic said.
The starting point of his proposal, then, is the assessment that the campaign has effectively already begun before the election was even called. From that he draws the conclusion that the work around polling stations cannot be planned in the week before the vote.
Three layers that need to work as one
Radovanovic is calling for coordination between three groups of people that opposition lists typically send into the field:
- members of polling boards, who are at the polling station itself during voting and counting
- legal teams, who respond to objections and disputed situations
- mobile teams, who move between polling stations
His point is that these three layers must not work separately, but as a single whole, with a predetermined way of reporting irregularities and a clear procedure for collecting the paperwork that later carries evidentiary weight.
“Everyone needs to function as a whole, with a precisely defined way of reporting irregularities, gathering evidence, and collecting the minutes and results from every polling station,” the PSG secretary general said.
Radovanovic did not go into how that coordination would work technically in his statement, nor did he say whether the proposal was addressed only to his own party or to the entire opposition scene.
Why do the three days after voting matter?
Because, in his assessment, that is the period when room opens up for manipulating election material and results, after the polling stations have closed. Radovanovic says that space can be narrowed if everyone taking part in the election already knows their task for election day.
The wording is measured, and that is not by chance. He does not claim that disputed actions can be eliminated entirely, only that organization can narrow the space for them. The distinction matters, because in previous election cycles the dispute between the authorities and the opposition centered precisely on what happens to the minutes and materials once voting ends.
Earlier disputes over the voter list
The proposal comes at a moment when the voter list is already the subject of opposition objections. The Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP) reported 42 addresses from the voter list to the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), as we reported earlier.
In practice, the two issues are kept separate. The list is challenged before election day, with the relevant authorities and observer missions, while the material and the minutes are defended at the polling station itself, in the hours when the ballots are counted. Radovanovic’s proposal concerns this second part of the job.
It remains open whether opposition lists will use a single mechanism for reporting irregularities in the field or whether each will run its own. The answer will only become clear once the election is called and the expanded polling boards start being appointed, since only then will it be known how many people each list can actually place at the polling stations.
