Republic Election Commission (REK) she rejected the electoral list's objections "Student List - Students Win" which related to the organization of voting abroad.
The objections concern the layout of polling stations for parliamentary elections scheduled for October 25, but also the voting time, which is determined according to the time in Serbia.
At the center of the objections are three questions: how many polling stations have been opened abroad and where they are located, whether the REC's decision was made within the legal deadline, and how it will be ensured that Serbian citizens living in other countries can exercise their right to vote.
Among the cities where there are no polling stations, and from which citizens of Serbia have not been assigned to others, are Manama, Sofia, Santiago, Doha, Bucharest, Timisoara, Bratislava, Istanbul and Ankara, as well as Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Cities from which voters were not assigned to existing polling stations within the state are listed in the objection: Graz, Innsbruck, Nuremberg, Hanover, Cologne, Florence, Vicenza, Herceg Novi, Vancouver, Calgary and others.
At the session held on October 10, the RIK Commission rejected the objections of the Student List as unfounded.
Students announced their appeal to the Administrative Court
The students announced that they will appeal to the Administrative Court against the REC's latest decisions, claiming that the REC, the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government (MDULS) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) obstructed the registration of citizens from abroad to vote in the October 25 elections.
According to the students, the REC scheduled the session at which it rejected the appeals of "Student lists - Students are winning" only after the legal deadline of 72 hours for deciding on objections had expired. They believe that citizens from the diaspora who submitted applications were denied timely protection of their right to vote.
The students also claim that the processing of applications for voting abroad was interrupted on October 3 at 11:59 p.m., when the system was locked. As they state, because of this, the diplomatic and consular missions could not process all the requests received by the deadline.
They attribute responsibility for problems in the application process to MDULS, which they claim stopped the processing and forwarding of several thousand applications, as well as to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, according to their statements, prevented the further work of diplomatic and consular missions.
The students assess that this is a deliberate limitation of the number of voters from the diaspora, which they claim was carried out with the tacit consent of the REC. They believe that the goal of such action is to justify the closing of embassies, the cancellation of certain polling stations and the organization of voting during the night.
In the announcement, they also raised the question of whether the Serbian authorities asked the host countries for permission to open polling stations outside diplomatic and consular missions. They cited Germany as an example, claiming that its authorities were not contacted on the matter.
Announcing the appeal to the Administrative Court, the students said that any disputed request, incorrect information and illegal refusal of application, according to their opinion, will have to be the subject of legal and political responsibility.
What did the Student List ask for?
The student list challenged the decision on the distribution of polling stations and asked to consider the opening of additional polling stations for citizens of Serbia abroad. According to that objection, it is not sufficiently explained why polling stations are not opened in certain cities where there are diplomatic-consular offices, a sufficient number of registered voters and the conditions for safe voting.
An additional problem, according to the arguments of the Student List, is that the distance from a certain polling station imposes travel and accommodation costs on individual citizens. Thus, they argued, the formal right to vote does not necessarily turn into an equally available opportunity to exercise it.
Why did the REC reject the complaint?
Two different legal arguments emerged in the debate.
The argument of the REC was that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is authorized to propose polling stations abroad, and the Commission is bound by that proposal. The representative of the RIK, Dragana Odović, stated that the law does not mandate the opening of polling stations in every diplomatic-consular representation. The criterion is the number of registered voters, from 100 to 2.500 per polling station.
The objection of some members of the Commission was that the decision was made after the expiration of the 72-hour deadline for handling the complaint. Ivan Šebek indicated the possibility of a legal remedy before the Administrative Court for missing the deadline, while Sofija Mandić criticized the Commission's actions and the manner in which the hearing was conducted.
The deputy member of the RIK, Miloš Srećković, contested the claim that the delay meant that the Commission could no longer make a decision. RIK President Vladimir Dimitrijević reiterated that the Commission acts on the basis of the proposal of the authorized proposer.
How many voters are there?
REC announced that 6.450.523 voters were registered in the Unified Voter's List for the parliamentary elections on October 25, according to the situation on October 9, 2026.
It was officially confirmed that the same number of ballots will be printed, with a note that the number of voters may change until the final state is determined.
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