Serbia faces renewed election transparency concerns over Voter Register Audit

Serbia’s Voter Register Audit Commission has rejected a request from the opposition and civil society groups to provide electronic extracts from the Unified Voter Register (JBS), raising further concerns about the transparency of the electoral process and the possibility of abuse just as campaigning intensifies ahead of the October 25 elections, Belgrade media reported on Thursday.

Auditing the voter register has been one of the key priorities in Serbia’s electoral reform efforts for years, CE Report quotes HINA.

It is also among the main recommendations issued to Serbian authorities in February 2024 by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to improve electoral conditions.

The ODIHR recommendation has even become one of Serbia’s obligations on its path towards European Union membership. However, with just over two weeks remaining until the snap parliamentary elections, little progress has been made, according to opposition representatives and non-governmental organizations.

The request to the Voter Register Audit Commission aimed to address longstanding concerns about possible discrepancies between the electronic voter register held in the central database and the version to be printed and distributed to polling station committees. However, the ruling majority on the commission rejected this form of scrutiny, citing what the opposition described as rather far-fetched legal arguments.

“We want to make sure that the document printed for polling stations matches the database and that there are no discrepancies whatsoever. Only then can we stand behind the voter register that is printed and sent to polling stations,” Zdravko Janković, an opposition member of the Voter Register Audit Commission representing the Green-Left Front (ZLF), told the Novar.rs portal.

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