Elections? It won't be long after someone mentions them on television, at a pub table or in some text, whether it's about local races in Kosjerić and Zaječar or a student request to call extraordinary parliamentary elections, without the topic reaching that abyss where the issue of voter lists is always raised. That great and never-solved mystery of Serbian democracy returns again and again in every election opportunity, and it is not at all strange that most citizens, when asked about the regularity of elections, will always say that the most important thing is to "update the lists".
It is, of course, a fundamental problem of trust. It is very difficult for the citizens of Serbia to have deeper trust in the current regime, which is constantly reaching for untruths, but even if this is not the case, the voter list is a delicate topic for all political actors, parties, observers, and recently also for students. The voter list is managed by the current government, and anyone who opposes it must have doubts about the accuracy of the list itself and, consequently, the elections that are organized according to it.
"In order for the electoral process in a country to deserve to be called democratic, it must meet the standards for free and fair elections," states Crta, who gave a series of about 20 specific recommendations for improving these standards. However, updating the voter list is only one, the thirteenth recommendation of Crta, and there are a whole series of other challenges in the organization of elections.
Citizens who are not included in the list know very well that those who are not on it cannot vote, so it is more than clear that an important condition for democratic elections is that the list is correct. Of course, the topic is not those who are not there, but those who are registered in the list and are not voters, that is, they do not exist at all. The existence of stowaways at polling stations, when more unknown voters appear at addresses where they do not live, as well as "dead voters", are a constant problem with updating the voter list, but the question is how crucial it is for the democratic procedure and the regularity of elections.
It is certainly, in itself, a technical question. Citizens who have passed away, for example, will remain in the system for a long time for the simple reason that someone - the official and the software - did not remove them in a timely manner. Officials of the competent Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government update the lists once a month, which has been made easier since the digitization of the process, they are also changed at the request of voters, but then, what must happen, and it happens according to the decision of the Republican Electoral Commission, they conclude before the election and as the whole process is not perfect, even if it is assumed that there are no frauds, they inevitably remain with voters who are not there.
The dead can thus be found in the voter's list, but they have certain technical problems to vote themselves. For starters, they're not alive. No matter how obvious it is, it should be remembered that in order to manipulate their vote, it is necessary for someone to pick up the ballot paper instead of dead people, vote and insert it into the box, or else, to add their vote to the final tally. Otherwise, a dead person cannot influence the outcome of the election, no matter how he is on the list. Therefore, in addition to the list, other actions are always necessary for electoral fraud. The same is the case with registered voters, their appearance on the list will not affect the outcome, especially when it comes to parliamentary elections, but their artificial inclusion can be electoral fraud.
However, an incorrect voter list creates convenient circumstances for electoral fraud to occur. Contrary to the established view that anyone can do what they want during elections, the punishments for proven electoral fraud are monstrous, they are among the strictest in our legal system, and most of the actors who carry out electoral activities during election day and afterwards do so in a certain fear. Well-designed frauds therefore count on the total absence of control in the electoral commissions, where no one individual will be called to account because there will be no evidence, as well as on deeper errors in the system.
A MILLION GHOSTS
The first question is, obviously, how big is the electoral roll. On the website of the competent Ministry (https://upit.birackispisak.gov.rs/PregledBrojaBiraca) you can review the number of voters by municipality, that is, by city, in real time, on a daily basis. This is significant because it prevents major anomalies that could occur in the run-up to the election to redistribute voters. There are 191 municipalities in which this number is kept, and the total number (which anyone can add up) is currently 6.439.250 voters in the Republic of Serbia. In the elections on December 17, 2023, the REC, for example, concluded that the total number of voters registered in the voter list was 6.500.165.
This decline in the number of voters of about 60.000 people, from the controversial December elections to the moment when the students demanded the calling of elections, is a consequence of demography and negative natural growth. Serbia is dying. After a three-decade-long demographic crisis, Serbia annually loses a population the size of Kraljevo, and this is a process that permeates all aspects of the country's life, so it is naturally reflected in the declining list.
However, don't you think that despite this, this number is a bit too high?
Namely, according to the official data of the Republic Institute of Statistics, in the 2022 census it was established that the enumerated part of Serbia has 6.647.003 inhabitants, an average life expectancy of 73 years and an average birth rate of 1,63 children per woman. That number has now dropped to just over 6,5 million.
However, there are just so many citizens registered in the voter's list, from which someone could hastily conclude that voting in Serbia is done without an age limit and that there are also people under the age of 18 in it. The number of minors in Serbia is also decreasing, but it is more than one million people, which means that in relation to registered citizens, the number of voters should not be more than 5,5 million. Where did the million voters go?
When someone raises this question, the authorities usually answer that the census measures the real state, while the voters' list is the so-called legal state. Unfortunately, the legal situation in Serbia is drastically different from reality. A very important detail is that the voter list also includes citizens of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija, while the census did not include them for technical reasons. However, there are not a whole million or more of these citizens, but, although no one knows exactly, about 100.000. Where are the other voters, almost 900.000 legal but not real citizens? Some are not alive, and many are simply abroad and not registered, but since they have citizenship and residence, they cannot be erased.
Connoisseurs of election opportunities have always reckoned with "a million non-existent voters", which certainly affects all election turnout calculations, which are always drastically less than the real number of those who participate in the election process. However, it does not affect the outcome until some of those absent voters miraculously vote in the elections.
Citizens themselves can check their status at the address https://upit.birackispisak.gov.rs/Verifikacija, where if they provide information, they can determine which polling station they are at. More than that is not possible online now, but if you find that you have stowaway voters in your apartment or house, you can physically apply at your local police station. In any case, although the difference between the census and the electoral roll is evident, there is currently no precisely measured number of voters who really do not exist.
POLLING PLACES
The key, however, is not what to do with them, but how to stop the abuse of their existence on the list. And that is the process that takes place at the polling station and where its size plays a certain role. In a large place, such as a city, with 1500 or more voters, the voter's list has more than 40 sheets on which, if the turnout is more than half, there will be about 800 signatures, which is a messy job for counting, technically much more difficult than counting ballots. Anyone who has followed, observed or participated in the work of the electoral committee knows very well that counting the list is the most noticeable part of the job. And at the same time the most delicate because the voter's list has only one copy and after counting there is no control of what was counted. In practice, the chairman of the electoral board, whether he has good intentions or not, will recognize those board members who have administrative experience and are familiar with lists and lists, and will appoint two people (from different parties) to count the signatures in the electoral roll.
Unfortunately, in many committees, only rounded voters will be counted (which is very likely to be the wrong number, because the person working on the list cannot always get around to rounding the number, and each voter is signed) or, more often, the list will not be counted at all, but the numbers will be adjusted based on the counted ballots. When all the numbers in the minutes match perfectly (there are exactly the total, not less), it can be a signal that the board skipped counting the list, and these are all details that primarily concern the training of controllers and observers.
The chronic lack of trained election board members is a tumor of Serbian democracy. Most parties do not have a large enough infrastructure to cover all polling committees at all polling stations with their members, and at the same time they cannot count on all the ones they propose because members of local polling committees often decide, with or without compensation, not to show up on election day. The ruling party has many members, it is organized in a capillary system and at each polling station it has a large number of representatives that it has delegated to polling committees. In some places, because of this, she alone, with her allies, counts the votes.
Under those conditions, the voter list is less of a problem than any other. Its flaws and a million non-existent voters can only facilitate potential abuses due to insufficient and untrained controllers. Students have enough mass that when they go to the polls, they can cover every polling station even if the voter list is as it is. Inevitably, they have to watch out for the ghosts hidden in it, so that they don't become vampires during election day.
