The Central Election Commission (CEC) of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) recently initiated proceedings against more than six hundred members of polling stations, on suspicion of violating the Election Law in the 2020 local elections. The CEC, after filing criminal charges, awaited prosecutorial decisions that did not arrive. The Brcko District Court also ruled on violations of the law, sentencing election fraud to prison, which is an extremely rare case in court practice. What exactly are the penalties for election fraud?
Pejo Mendes, Jasmin Ravkic, and Mato Gluhakovic were sentenced to six, four, and two months in prison each for preparing election fraud. In order to obtain votes for Mendes,they got personal documents of several voters from the Brcko District, photographed them, and then reported them to the CEC as voters from abroad. The plan was for the blank ballots to reach the party headquarters instead of the addresses in Serbia and Croatia. The prosecutor’s office and the court in Brcko are pioneers in punishing election fraud with imprisonment. Other cases, even if there is a court epilogue, end in a fine.
Vehid Sehic, member of the Strategic Committee of the Coalition “Pod lupom” said: ”This is the first case. I must also say, I know that State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) is also checking certain election irregularities in Mostar, but also in other places in BiH proceedings are being conducted without, still, a court epilogue.”
And the attempts at electoral engineering are more than creative. For example, four years ago, there were almost 9.000 centenarians on the Central Voters’ List, although, according to the Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange of BiH (IDDEE), there were 769 of them in BiH at the time. Identity theft is also common, as well as the case wheredeceased people often ‘vote’.
Ivana Korajlic, Transparency International BiH, mentioned: ”Many things are not adequately regulated by law, from abusing public office, abusing public funds to pressure voters to vote for a particular political party, through employment, buying votes with budget funds, which we will not see for a long time to be sanctioned.”
Electoral fraud is covered by both the entity and the Criminal Code of BiH. There is a wide range of criminal offenses for which fines and imprisonment are envisaged – from voting instead of someone else, deleting from the voter list, falsifying documents, and violating the secrecy of the ballot. This is the responsibility of the judiciary.
The CEC may sanction violations of election rules. It can fine up to 10.000 BAM, annul the certification of candidates, political parties, or lists, and it can ban work at the polling station.Journalists did not find out whether the CEC members did something about it. They did not respond to calls, and questions were not answered.
E.Dz.
