Gorazde Tests Fingerprint Voting Before Bosnia's Election

A month before its general elections, Bosnia and Herzegovina is rolling out, for the first time, a system meant to close one of the region’s oldest channels for election fraud: voting under someone else’s name and casting ballots at more than one polling station. For Serbia, which has spent years arguing over the integrity of its own voter rolls, its neighbor’s experience with biometrics is the first real test of how much such technology actually changes voting, and how much of it stays a technical detail with no effect on the pressure put on voters.

Bosnia’s general elections are set for October 4, 2026, and for the first time every polling station in the country will use biometric voter identification devices alongside optical ballot scanners. Voters confirm their identity with a fingerprint, and if a fingerprint can’t be read, the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CIK) has built in a backup procedure using a PIN and a smart card. Paper ballots still remain part of the process, meaning scanned data can be checked against the physical ballots if a dispute over results arises.

How the system reached the polling stations

Introducing biometrics wasn’t a decision made for this campaign. It grew out of a pilot project the European Union has backed for years, and after seeing its results, the CIK decided to extend the equipment to every polling station in the country. The first shipment, out of a planned 200 biometric identification devices and 200 scanners, arrived in early August, barely a month and a half before the vote.

A public demonstration was held on September 1 outside the City Administration building in Gorazde, running until 5 PM, organized by the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina together with the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Council of Europe Office in Sarajevo. Residents were able to try out both devices themselves and ask institution representatives how the system will work on election day.

“Based on preliminary testing, scanning a ballot takes about 40 seconds, and that’s the whole process,” said Amira Borovac, president of the Gorazde City Election Commission, at the demonstration outside the City Administration building.

For this election, the city of Gorazde is planning 32 regular polling stations, one station for absentee and unconfirmed ballots, and four mobile teams. According to the Gorazde Voters’ Register Center, 19,969 people in the area are eligible to vote, while the CIK’s central database lists 22,117 voters for the same area, a figure that also includes those voting through diplomatic and consular missions.

EU backed the rollout, observers warn of technology’s limits

The introduction of biometric identification and ballot scanners has the backing of the European Union, which treats election integrity as one of the benchmarks on Bosnia’s path to membership.

“The new technologies are aimed at reducing election manipulation,” said Luidji Soreka, head of the EU Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The system is designed to prevent multiple voting, voting under someone else’s name, and the use of invalid identification documents, precisely the kinds of fraud that, until now, have been hard to prove without physically comparing signatures and ballots on the ground. Even so, election observers warn the equipment only solves part of the problem.

“Technology can help make sure votes are counted correctly, but it can’t, on its own, prevent every form of election corruption,” said Darko Jovanovic, project manager at the Pod lupom Coalition.

Pressure on employees, promises of jobs, and vote buying all stay out of reach of any scanner, because they happen before a voter ever steps up to the device. That’s exactly why Bosnia’s October election won’t just be a test of new equipment. It will also show how quickly a technical fix can shift trust in a system, in a country that has spent decades racking up disputes over election results, disputes that other countries in the region, Serbia included, have watched play out firsthand.