According to the findings of the Coalition “Pod lupom,” the early elections for the president of Republika Srpska (RS) brought a close electoral race, but also a series of irregularities that call into question the reliability of part of the results.
In its findings, the Coalition assesses that these elections are not an exception to the “regular ailments” of the electoral process in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The irregularities, they state, begin even before election day through illegal pressure on voters, vote buying, abuse of public resources, inappropriate speech and hate speech, premature campaigning, and even the abuse of children in the campaign. On election day itself, they claim, the problem shifts to polling stations: adding votes to candidates, targeted invalidation of ballots cast for political opponents, falsification of signatures, and voting on behalf of those who did not turn out for the elections.
They also warn about what often accompanies established illegalities in BiH: sanctions, even when they do arrive, come slowly and are rarely proportional to the committed irregularities and criminal offenses. Investigations drag on for years, and for criminal acts of electoral fraud, few are held seriously accountable.
The Coalition “Pod lupom” monitored the elections using the methodology of parallel vote tabulation (PVT) on a statistically representative sample of polling stations, which is used for independent verification of election results, especially in environments with low public trust in the electoral process.
According to their data, the results they collected are consistent with those published by the Central Election Commission (CEC) of BiH in the sense that they show a close race between two candidates and the lead of one of them. However, the difference between the two leading candidates in the “Pod lupom” sample is 0.7%, which is within the margin of statistical error of plus-minus 1.5 percent, and is noticeably smaller than the difference shown by the results determined by the CEC (the current difference between the two leading candidates on the CEC website, taking into account only votes from regular polling stations also observed by the Coalition “Pod lupom,” is 1.89 percent). For this reason, the Coalition “Pod lupom” cannot with certainty confirm the winner of the electoral race.
The most concrete part of the observation findings relates to the comparison of preliminary results from polling stations and the results of recounts at the Main Counting Center. On a sample of 131 polling stations from which votes were recounted, “Pod lupom” states that differences were identified at 72 polling stations, while at 59 polling stations there were no deviations. At those 72 polling stations, they claim, “at least 827 votes were stolen”: according to processed data, 532 votes were illegally added to Sinisa Karan, and 295 votes were deducted from Branko Blanusa. On average, about 11 votes were “stolen” per polling station where differences were established.
The Coalition “Pod lupom” also recalls the alarming scale of irregularities observed earlier, especially after the 2022 General Elections, when recounts of votes for the president of RS pointed to organized electoral fraud in certain cities (Doboj, Prijedor, Zvornik), which are also the subject of the greatest suspicions of electoral manipulation this time as well.
The Coalition “Pod lupom” states that at polling stations where their observers were present, the number of disputed votes was “incomparably smaller” – only 28 votes were disputed at those polling stations, many times fewer than at polling stations where there were no “Pod lupom” observers and where almost 800 votes were disputed.
At the same time, they point to the limitations of observation: observers, they claim, were often not allowed unobstructed and effective monitoring of the vote counting “from close proximity,” which opens space for irregularities to occur even in front of those who are there to prevent them.
The Coalition states that it submitted to the CEC an extensive package of documents related to key findings of election observation: a preliminary assessment of election day, PVT results, a list of critical situations, a list of reports of irregularities, as well as lists of polling stations with discrepancies and procedural shortcomings of polling station committees. They also previously called on the CEC to order recounts at polling stations with “extreme values,” such as very high turnout or pronounced dominance of one candidate, as well as cases where sensitive materials arrived at the premises of local election commissions after 11 p.m.
The CEC has already recounted votes from 131 polling stations with suspicious values. The Coalition believes that recounts should continue wherever there is a basis for doing so, regardless of how much time the process requires, and that elections should be repeated and criminal complaints filed in cases where vote theft or falsification of voters’ signatures has been established.
In the findings, a key recommendation emerges: the demand that new election technologies be introduced at all polling stations for the 2026 General Elections, electronic voter identification, and ballot scanners.
The Coalition “Pod lupom” claims that these measures would prevent most of the irregularities that occur and that have been the subject of media reports in the days since voting, from voting on behalf of others, multiple voting, adding votes, to targeted manipulation of valid and invalid ballots, and subsequent “smoothing out” of results through forms and data entry into the system.
