The General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held on October 4 and, for the first time in the country’s history, will be conducted using election technology that had been expected for a few years.
New technologies represent the biggest election reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of the war in 1995. The new system is expected to resolve the biggest issue in the country’s election process – irregularity.
Of course, the fact that polling places will now feature scanners and that the election process will be conducted at a higher technological level does not guarantee that many irregularities to which we are accustomed in Bosnia and Herzegovina will disappear. Still, it could reduce the risk to a negligible level.
In that regard, it is worth turning to history to understand the scope of election irregularities in our country through a couple of previous election processes.
Vote recounts as a practice, and often the annulment of results.
Looking back at the previous 12 years in Bosnia and Herzegovina shows that in only seven election processes (General and Local Elections, and Pre-mature elections for the President of Republika Srpska, three times each) recorded over hundreds of cases of irregularities, which often resulted in annulment of elections.
Vote recounts are a practice in election processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Every election cycle includes vote recounts in dozens of polling places.
Of course, these are not necessarily irregularities, but show that there is a certain level of doubt in reported results.
However, there were severe cases that ended up in court and repeated election processes.
Repeated Elections from Stolac to Doboj
The first significant case of election irregularity in the recent history of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the 2016 Local Elections in Stolac.
There were many reports of irregularities at the time, and also a physical encounter at one of the polling places. For this reason, the Central Election Committee decided to repeat the entire process.
The same year, irregularities in different polling places were recorded, and the votes in Knježevo and Posušje were also recounted.
Four years later, at the 2020 Local Elections, up until then, two of the largest instances of election irregularities took place and ended in repeated elections.
Namely, it was the case in Doboj, where the CEC annulled the results in 89 polling places. As they explained in the decision they made in late January, 2021, there was an organized obstruction of observers from accessing polling stations, involving Sanja Vulić, a prominent SNSD member and current state MP.
Due to over 100 complaints, namely the observers of the opposition parties from Republika Srpska, the CEC decided to annul the results and repeat the election process in 89 polling stations.
A similar situation, although on a smaller scale, occurred in Srebrenica the same year, where a result from 28 polling stations was annulled in the end.
The CEC explained that a large number of voters who voted without valid identification documents were recorded. Other irregularities were also recorded, including passing ballot paper from one booth to another, finding incomplete ballots in the booths, adding individuals to the central voters’ register, stuffing ballot boxes, and similar irregularities.
Two years later, at the 2022 General Elections, there were no irregularities on the scale of 2020, but the CEC still had its work cut out for it.
In total, there was a suspicion of certain irregularities at 566 polling stations, which is 10 percent of the total number at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, an audit recount was requested for 2, 608 polling stations.
Upon the completion of the checks, mass irregularities were not determined, but the need for additional recounts shows that the security of the election process in Bosnia and Herzegovina is at a relatively low level.
Premature Elections in Republika Srpska Show the Flaws of the Current Electoral Process
The case that perhaps represents the biggest argument for implementing new technologies in the electoral process happened at the end of 2024, when premature elections for the President of Republika Srpska were organized.
Upon the completion of the elections, the CEC confirmed many irregularities and annulled results from polling stations in 17 municipalities. With the CEC decisions, which were confirmed by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the results were annulled in 136 polling stations in Doboj, Laktaši, Zvornik, Bileća, Gacko, Bratunac, Kalinovik, Berkovići, Srbac, Lopare, Istočna Ilidža, Han Pijesak, Ugljevik, Ribnik, Vlasenica, Modriča, Banja Luka, Jezero, and Istočno Novo Sarajevo.
Although the outcome was identical in the end, the fact that in 136 polling stations a result was annulled says a lot about the election process that had many flaws.
Of course, new technologies carry new challenges, such as hacker attacks and electronic result manipulation, but they should significantly increase the security aspect, which is the biggest problem of the election process in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At the General Elections in October, calls for a vote recount and accusations of irregularities can be expected, but examples such as premature elections for the President of Republika Srpska, as well as the 2020 election processes in Doboj and Srebrenica, should be avoided, Klix.ba writes.
