Serbia's Diaspora: 55,000 Registered, No Polling Sites Yet
Members of the voter roll audit commission say about 55,000 citizens have registered to vote abroad, while the RIK is still waiting for a proposal from the Foreign Ministry.
About 55,000 voters have registered to vote abroad in the snap parliamentary election on October 25, and the Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) has not yet decided where diaspora voting will take place. RIK member Dusan Dincic told the Beta news agency that the proposal for polling stations abroad has to come from the Foreign Ministry, and that he has not received it so far.
Registration closes on Saturday, October 3, at midnight. The election is held on Sunday, October 25, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., so less than a month remains before voting, and neither the number nor the layout of polling stations outside the country is known.
What did Dincic say about polling stations abroad?
According to Dincic, at a meeting between the RIK and representatives of the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, those ministries refused to disclose the number of voters registered to vote abroad. On the procedure, he said:
Nothing has been decided yet, because the procedure is that the Foreign Ministry submits to the RIK a proposal for opening polling stations abroad, which the RIK can adopt or reject.
Dincic added that, to his knowledge, “more than 55,000” citizens have registered to vote, and that given such interest the ministry should propose a larger number of polling stations abroad.
How many voters have registered, and what exactly is being counted?
Ognjen Rasuo, a member of the voter roll audit commission from the Green-Left Front, cites the same figure. He explained to Nova that commission members do not know how many applications have arrived, only how many decisions have been issued, and said:
As of yesterday that is 55,000 decisions, and we know how many people are registering to vote abroad, because we have those decisions.
The difference in wording matters. Marko Dimic, the Freedom and Justice Party representative on that commission, told Danas: “These are only the positively resolved requests that have arrived,” adding that there have been no rejected requests so far.
Dimic had earlier announced that by Friday, September 25, 44,141 voters were registered in 61 countries, as we reported in an earlier article. According to Rasuo, more than 10,000 new applications arrived over the past three days. Dimic told Danas: “The number of registered voters now has to be compared with the earlier one. The growth is huge.”
For comparison, at the previous parliamentary election in 2023, 39,270 voters were registered abroad and 31,552 of them voted. Today’s figure is therefore about 15,700 higher, even though registration is still open. Some commission members, according to Danas, estimate that the final figure could reach 80,000.
Most applications came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed by Germany, Austria, the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Canada and Montenegro.
When does a polling station open abroad?
Polling stations abroad are designated on the proposal of the Foreign Ministry. Under that ministry’s guidelines, a polling station is as a rule designated where at least 100 interested voters are registered for a given location. In exceptional cases, with the RIK’s consent, one can be designated for a smaller number.
RIK chair Vladimir Dimitrijevic told RTS that there are currently 8,210 polling stations in the country, and that stations abroad and in penal institutions still have to be designated. Rasuo told Nova that problems with opening stations abroad cannot be discussed until the stations have been designated:
When they are designated, then we will see. The decision on polling stations is made by the RIK
Rasuo added that the stations will be designated by the RIK, or by the embassies themselves if they have the conditions to organize voting.
Voters in Germany are already doing the math. According to Danas, people connected through groups claim they have collected enough requests for four more polling stations in that country, in Cologne, Hanover, Nuremberg and Karlsruhe, but will only get a final answer once the voter roll is closed.
What is the opposition asking the Foreign Ministry?
The Serbia Centre party said it asked the ministry whether diplomatic and consular missions have been instructed to stop reporting the number of registered voters through official channels and to report it instead in a closed group of “small groups of coordinators”. Students in blockade published a list of countries where, they claim, applications have sat unprocessed for weeks, and asked the ministry and the RIK for a report. According to Nova, neither the RIK nor the ministry has officially responded to these objections.
A Danas article states that the Kreni-Promeni movement claims the Foreign Ministry’s secretary general, Dusan Kozarev, allegedly issued an oral instruction to obstruct the opening of polling stations, especially in Germany and the US. Foreign Minister Marko Djuric dismissed this as stirring up unrest in the diaspora for “political interests”. The same article notes that there is no evidence for the obstruction claim.
Thirteen electoral lists were declared for this election and one was withdrawn, leaving 12, five of which hold national minority status. Applications from abroad are accepted until Saturday, October 3, and only after the Foreign Ministry’s proposal can the RIK decide where diaspora voters will cast their ballots.
