Students Seek Vacant Shops for Signatures, Kosovo Joins

Serbia’s student-led blockade movement has opened a new channel for collecting signatures and election paperwork. A portal called “Students Win, Space for Signatures” lets citizens offer up empty commercial premises across Serbia to be used for work with signature collectors. The call went out on August 27 and covers storefronts, offices, halls, and other vacant business spaces.

Just a day later, a separate informal group, Support for Students from Kosovo and Metohija, joined a similar kind of campaign. On Instagram, it called on residents of Kosovo and Metohija to apply as monitors for Serbia’s upcoming elections. Taken together, the hunt for space and the recruitment of monitors show that the student movement is now building campaign infrastructure, not just posting messages on social media.

What’s Asked of a Listed Space

Registering on the portal takes a few steps. A person enters the exact location and address of the space, its square footage, and the period during which it would be available. The students behind the portal write:

Citizens who want to help can register a space and leave basic information about its location, conditions, and the period during which it would be available.

Alongside the basic details, applicants are asked to list the equipment and conditions the space offers:

• electricity
• a toilet
• water
• internet access
• parking
• air conditioning
• a storefront window or a window facing the street
• accessibility for people with disabilities

At the end, the person registering leaves their first and last name, phone number, and email address, while photos of the space are optional. Once the team in charge of logistics reviews the submission, it follows up by phone or email, and there is also an option to check the status of a submission made earlier.

Who Gets to See the Data

The people behind the portal put particular emphasis on how the data is protected. As they put it, “the data is encrypted and protected, while the name, phone number, email, address, and note are stored in encrypted form.” Every access to and review of the data is logged, they say, including the name of the person who accessed it and the time of access. Submissions are reviewed exclusively by the team in charge of space logistics, while other members of the movement, according to the system as described, have no access to it.

This kind of registration system did not appear out of nowhere. Our newsroom previously reported on a case in Novi Sad, where students were evicted from the premises they had been using to collect signatures. That episode showed just how sensitive access to physical space can be during a campaign, and the portal launched on August 27 looks like a response to exactly that kind of risk: instead of relying on a single location, the movement is building a network of spaces with a record of owners and conditions attached.

Poll Monitors From Kosovo for Elections in Central Serbia

Alongside the search for space, a separate effort to recruit poll monitors among residents of Kosovo and Metohija is also underway. The group Support for Students from Kosovo and Metohija posted a call on Instagram on August 28, accompanied by a QR code, with the message: “Scan the QR code, the link is waiting in the profile bio. Students Win. Get involved!”

Why do Kosovo voters cast ballots in central Serbia?

The call has a concrete logistical background. For several years now, residents of Kosovo have not been able to vote in Serbian elections on Kosovo territory itself. They cast their ballots at polling stations set up in central Serbia, near Kursumlije, Raska, Vranje, and Ribarici. A monitor who comes from the same area where the voters actually live, according to the campaign’s own logic, more easily recognizes who is who at those polling stations and more easily spots any potential irregularities.

The two efforts, the portal for space and the call for monitors, were launched a day apart and look like two parts of the same preparation by the student movement for the upcoming elections: one aimed at infrastructure on the ground, the other at the people who would oversee the act of voting itself. How much space and how many monitors will ultimately be registered is not yet known, and the answer will also depend on when the election cycle both campaigns are preparing for is officially called.