RIK rejects guidance on voting outside polling stations
A proposal by some Commission members, under which a polling board would check with a voter before a home visit that they know they were registered, failed at the October 10 session.
The Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) did not adopt a proposed instruction on registering and notifying voters who vote outside the polling station at its session on October 10. The proposal came from some of the Commission’s members, and the available reports from the session do not say how the vote split or who voted against.
What did the instruction provide for?
Under the proposal, a polling board would have had to contact the voter before going out into the field, to establish whether the voter knew they had been registered to vote outside the polling station and whether they really wanted to vote that way. A single register of such voters would also have been kept.
RIK member David Krstic presented the proposal on behalf of the signatories of the initiative. He said the basis for the instruction is contained in the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament and that the text came out of the work of the working group for regulatory matters. He described its core this way:
“The core of the instruction is that a uniform record is kept of voters who register to vote outside the polling station, both in the local electoral commission and in the polling board on the day of voting. That record will contain data on the voter, but also on a third person, if that person registered them.”
Why did some members want registrations checked?
RIK member Vladimir Dragas spoke about the scale of registrations. By his account, about two percent of voters were registered to vote outside the polling station during the coronavirus pandemic. Outside that period the average is about four percent, and in some places it reaches eight percent. Dragas believes this points to abuse, and says some voters were surprised to learn they had been registered.
RIK Vice President Marko Jankovic, who chairs the working group for regulatory matters, explained how the text of the instruction came about. He said the working group held differing opinions on the legal consequences when no contact can be made with the voter, but that the best possible compromise was reached. The question of what follows when a voter cannot be reached was contested already inside the working group.
What else was decided at the same session?
The session lasted almost six hours, according to Telegraf. RIK determined that Serbia has 6,450,523 voters for the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 25, and decided to print the same number of ballots in 29 language versions. Printing at the Official Gazette’s print shop begins on Monday, October 12, at noon, Commission President Vladimir Dimitrijevic announced. A total of 102,147 voters are registered at 93 polling stations abroad.
The voter figure also drew objections within the Commission. RIK member Tanasije Marinkovic said he cannot believe the figures cited and will not vote for the decision, while member Sofija Mandic pointed out that the number of voters is practically identical to the number of residents. Mandic added that, according to her, people from the Commission for the Revision of the Voter Register say they did not have access to data on the number of adult citizens.
