BiH Test Vote: Ballots Delayed in 14 Municipalities
BiH's election commission tested new voting technology nationwide, but delayed ballots stopped voting in 14 municipalities, weeks before the October 4 elections in which Republika Srpska also votes.
While Serbian audiences focus on their own election campaign at home, Bosnia and Herzegovina held a rehearsal on September 11 that directly concerns voters in Republika Srpska too: a test of new election technology ahead of the general elections scheduled for October 4. The trial showed that the technology worked as intended at polling stations themselves, but that the logistics behind printing and delivering ballots broke down in 14 of the country’s 143 municipalities and cities, a month and a half before a vote in which citizens of Republika Srpska will also take part.
The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CIK BiH) ran the test vote in every municipality and city in the country, aiming to check the functionality, security and practical readiness of the new election technology under simulated voting conditions. According to the commission’s statement, voting failed to start on time in 14 local communities because the test ballots did not reach the polling stations in time. The company hired to print and distribute the ballots was behind schedule.
The commission acknowledged the shortcoming directly:
“A shortcoming was noted in the transport and delivery of election material, while the functionality of the devices at the polling stations and of the system as a whole was at a satisfactory level.”
The problem, in other words, was not with the technology itself but with the logistics meant to get paper ballots to polling stations. Because of this, the commission stayed in continuous session and waited until noon for ballots to reach every polling station, while municipal and city election commissions were instructed to open voting as soon as ballots arrived and to notify voters immediately. The test vote was extended because of the delays, until 6 p.m. at the latest.
Suad Arnautovic, the CIK chairman, visited one of the affected polling stations, in the Novo Sarajevo municipality, where ballots had still not arrived at the time. “This is a delay in the delivery of the test ballots,” he said on site. The commission’s own statement confirmed the same finding: “Test ballots were not delivered on time to certain polling stations.”
What the test showed beyond the ballot problem
In the parts of the country where voting started on time, the results were encouraging, according to CIK figures. A total of 6,854 voters took part in the trial, and fingerprint identity verification succeeded in 97.37 percent of cases. Transmitting results from polling stations to the central system took an average of five to ten minutes after polls closed, and the resilience of the election IT system to cyber threats was tested as well.
Arnautovic also explained why the rehearsal was held a month and a half before the actual vote. The commission, he said, was not bound to that particular date and could have scheduled the test a few days later, but wanted to catch any shortcomings early and fix them before October 4. In his words, the trial was practice for both sides of the process: for election officials, who set up the biometric identification devices with two-factor verification through a card and a PIN code, and for voters, who could check whether their identity documents were valid and practice filling out ballots with a special marker before election day itself.
The CIK member also confirmed that the commission is in contact with Smartmatic, the company awarded the contract for the new election technology, and that the issues identified during the test had been passed on to it. He did not rule out a second round of testing in about seven days, should the commission decide it is necessary, adding that the cost of repeating the exercise would be small.
What this means ahead of October 4
Our earlier report on this topic, “CIK Postpones Test Vote in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” covered the decision to push part of the rehearsal back. How the day actually unfolded showed that the postponement was not universal: voting went according to plan in 129 of the 143 municipalities and cities, while in the remaining 14 it was simply delayed for as long as the ballot delivery was late. For voters in Republika Srpska, who will vote in the same system on October 4, the message from Sarajevo cuts both ways. The technology itself, from fingerprint scanners to result transmission, passed the trial without serious complaints, while the weak link remained the same one that affects conventional voting: getting materials to the most remote polling stations.
CIK BiH announced that a final report on the test vote will be ready in the coming days and will give a detailed picture of how the technology, equipment and material transport worked together ahead of the October 4 general elections. Whether that report will also lead to a decision on additional testing in the affected municipalities is a question the commission is leaving open for now.
