Recount of around 90 per cent of locations undermines election process

This also marks the largest number of recounted locations in an election process.

In the October 6th election at the country level, there were 2 thousand and 547 pollings, with a total of 2 thousand and 269 seats being recounted, or about 90 per cent of the deployments.

Compared to the 2019 elections, 540 seats had been recounted in the parliamentary elections in 2017, and by 2014 some 530 seats had been recounted.

CEC spokesman Valmir Elezi, for Kosova Preis, has indicated that the number of locations that are recounted after the 6 October elections is 2 thousand and 269 seats.

The “is a large number of locations that are recounted after the 6 October parliamentary elections, initially with the CEC decision, more than 840 seats or 33 per cent of the deployments have been recounted. However, now following the PZAP decision, where about 1,000 and 430 seats will be recounted, or 56.07 per cent of them. So there's a large number of locations that undergo the recount process. Based on this data, the number of locations that are recounted after the 6 October elections is 2 000 of 269 locations, or about 90 per cent of the country's” polling, he said.

Elez has indicated that 540 parliamentary elections in 2017 have been re-counted, while 530 seats have been re-counted in 2014.

Elez: An estimated 540 seats have been recounted in the 2017 elections

If you compare this data to those of the 2014 and 2017 parliamentary elections, this number is evidently larger. In the 2014 elections, about 530 seats have been re-counted, while around 540 locations have been re-counted in 2017, he said.

The large number of recounted deployments is seen as negative and is damaging the entire election process.

University professor Mazlum Baraliu says of Kosova priss, that the recount of about 90 per cent of the deployments is in doubt and degrades the election process.

The process of the October 6th election has in fact been challenged and discredited to an unimaginable extent, simply worrying because it turns out that a process which has been highly democratic, very fair and very correct, with mass participation and an extraordinary outcome of rotation and change. Now a month and a month of crawling is coming up that it's been a process that has had its lights and that with this recounting he is still discrediting, and his considerable integrity is being violated”, he said over the phone.

Baraliu says the best solution to this problem is for the number of votes of candidates to take place at the Counting and Results Centre and not at the polls.

This counting system would have to change, and this could be done without a change of constitution, so with a change and implementation of the general election law, for local elections. The count of political subjects should be made at the polls, while the numbering of candidates is done at the Counting and Results Centre or for the whole process to go to the QNR, where there is potential for greater transparency”, he said.

The recounting of almost all the locations undermines the election process and says political analyst Rasim Alija, under which this recount has led citizens to perceive that the election process has been manipulated.

Alija: It has been damaged in two stages, even in integrity as a process and perception of citizens

“What has caused the counting and recounting process has created the perception that the election process has been damaged. It has been damaged in two phases, even in integrity as the process, but also in the perception of citizens that the election process has been manipulated. Not by chance do we have all these complaints and not by chance we have phases of the counting and recounting process so much more considering that at the country level almost 90 per cent of the locations have gone towards recounting. This also delays the process of forming institutions, but all we can say is that it needs to be addressed in electoral reform”, he says.

Declining the number of recounting positions Alia sees election reform as a solution. He says electoral reform should postpone the idea of double counting.

Alija: Election reform must go on to postpone idea of double counting

“Election reform should go towards pushing the idea of double counting with automatism. Then we could eliminate the part of the wait for decisions from both PZAP and the Supreme Court and the CEC's decisions. To know the electorate, the voter who is starting to become a double count, this also lowers the rest of the vote manipulation and does not come to the stage as we have come now that the election outcome is reduced to court decisions”, he says.

We remember that last night the recounting process of about a thousand and 428 deployments has begun after the decision the panel has made for Ances and Asset.