RIK Certifies Dacic's List, Number 2 on Ballot
Serbia's Republic Election Commission certified Ivica Dacic's list on September 14 and, later that evening, adopted its financial plan for the October 25 election.
Serbia’s Republic Election Commission (RIK) certified the electoral list “Ivica Dacic, Stability Factor” at its 18th session on September 14. The list represents a coalition of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), United Serbia, the Social Democratic Party of Serbia and the Greens of Serbia. RIK president Vladimir Dimitrijevic chaired the session, at which the list received ballot number 2 for the snap parliamentary election called for October 25.
The Dacic coalition submitted its list on Saturday, September 12, at 9:35 p.m., with 250 candidates. RIK’s review found that of the 21,266 voter signatures submitted, 18,162 were legally valid, well above the legal minimum of 10,000 certified statements, meeting the conditions for certification.
Ballot number 1 went to the list “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia,” which RIK certified a day earlier, on September 13. With two lists now certified, the order on the future ballot is starting to take shape, while party circles still expect the remaining lists to be filed before the deadline.
At the same session, RIK also settled the expanded composition of the commission. For the Dacic list, Srdjan Zoraja, a law graduate from Belgrade, was appointed member, and Uros Mijatovic, also a law graduate from Belgrade, was appointed deputy member. For the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list, Ivan Djordjevic was appointed member and Zeljka Radeta deputy member, both law graduates from Belgrade. At the same 18th session, RIK also decided in which local self-government units it will form the standing local election commissions itself, without publishing a list of those municipalities.
Later that evening, at its 19th session, still chaired by Dimitrijevic, RIK members adopted the commission’s financial plan for conducting the October 25 parliamentary election and made additional financial decisions related to the commission’s own work and the running of the campaign. The figures in the adopted plan were not disclosed.
The certification comes a week after we reported that Dacic was heading the SPS list submitted to RIK, closing the chronology from the announcement, through the signature submission, to formal certification and the assignment of a ballot number.
The question of signature verification remains in focus beyond the Dacic list as well. In its earlier review of the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list, RIK found 209,130 valid signatures out of 224,557 submitted, while 15,427 statements were declared invalid. Of those, according to the commission, 3,540 statements were disputed over documentation irregularities (missing data, a missing signature or notary stamp, an incorrect form), 5,154 signatories could not be found in the voter register, 1,253 people had backed the same list more than once, and 921 statements had a personal ID number that could not be verified. The scale of that review shows how strict the constitutional requirements around signature verification are in this election cycle, even for the largest lists, not only for newer coalitions like Dacic’s.
RIK continues to meet almost daily until the deadline for filing lists expires, and its next session, the commission has indicated, will bring a decision on further lists submitted.
