The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed that the general elections in October will be more complex from the point of view of the number of ballots that voters will receive, but also assured that when planning the application of new election technologies, they took into account both advantages and potential risks.
The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina notes that the goal of applying technology is not to further complicate voting, but to facilitate and speed up the processing of results, reduce the possibility of human error, increase transparency and improve the integrity of the electoral process.
“The final application is based on the results of the pilot projects, the analysis of the identified challenges and the measures to prevent and eliminate these challenges,” states the CEC’s response to Srna’s inquiry as to whether the announced complicated method of voting in the October elections will extend the election day, as well as whether the negative aspects of the application of such technologies, which could call into question the regularity, have been taken into account, especially since several countries have given up on their application.
The Central Election Commission of BiH indicates that before the introduction of electoral technologies into the electoral process, they conducted four pilot projects in the local elections of 2024, and after that they adopted the Final Report on the implemented pilot projects and the Feasibility Study for the introduction of specific electoral technologies into the electoral process of BiH, which was submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH.
When it comes to the possible extension of the voting time, according to the CEC, the pilot project of optical scanners gave concrete results.
At the 143 polling stations where the scanners were used, the average voting time was between 40 and 44.9 seconds, including the largest ballot used in the 2024 local elections.
At the same time, 140 polling stations were closed on time, which is one of the indicators that the use of scanners did not lead to excessive crowds or a significant extension of the voting process.
Bearing in mind the length of the ballot in the pilot projects in 2024, the CEC of BiH changed the design of the ballot precisely for faster processing.
The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirms that it is true that the general elections in October will be more complex from the point of view of the number of ballots that voters will receive, but they also point out that precisely because of this, in preparation, special attention is paid to equipment testing, election day simulations, training of election committee members and technical staff, as well as informing and educating voters.
“When it comes to the possible risks of applying election technologies, the CEC BiH did not ignore them. On the contrary, identifying technical and other challenges was one of the main goals of the pilot projects and the Feasibility Study,” states the CEC’s response, which is signed by expert associate for public relations Maksida Pirić.
It stated that “143 out of 145 optical scanners were found to be functional, while only two were out of commission”.
Since three scanners required the intervention of technical support due to memory replacement, the availability of spare memory cards at the polling stations was recommended.
At the same time, 98 percent of the results in the pilot project were transmitted electronically, and the remaining two percent were transmitted manually due to the load on the secure Internet network immediately after the polling stations closed.
The CEC also considers the fact that the electronically transmitted results remain unchanged and continuously available to the public, in contrast to the manually determined ones, which in some cases were changed during the subsequent process, to be important.
However, the facts show that many European countries, after bad experiences with electronic voting devices, have returned to classic voting through paper ballots and manual counting of votes.
It should be added that only the Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Iraq have a system with optical scanners when voting in elections, as introduced in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srna writes.
