Kosovo “sent” to the dead on Election Day

Kosovo raises the dead on election day. This is keeping the names of those who are not in life on the voters' list. It is similar with those who have renounced Kosovo's citizenship.

Part of these two categories give the vote whenever elections are held in Kosovo. Misuse thus has been present for nearly 20 years, but no formula has yet been found to end this manipulation.

We're coming to vote on those who are deca, before 1999 and we're coming from the fountain. All done. There I am”, a comment from an exile who was very much talked about in “Facebook” after announcing the October 6th early parliamentary elections, Koha Ditore writes today.

Through social networks and cafes, many have ironic why the newest European state has more citizens with rights than residents according to the 2011 census. And on the final voter list are also included in the deceased citizens whose families have evidence of civil authorities ' death certificates and evidence of religious authorities.

Kosovo has all state mechanisms and the help of religious communities, but still citizens in any election process see the names of the late loved ones on the voter list. There are times when it is reported on their “image after someone signed under his name and illegally dropped the ballot into the box. Civil society overseers suspect that in addition to neglecting state mechanisms, problems are repeated in any election process even because political subjects can benefit votes from their observers willing to take the risk “to vote” for the dead, or for exiles unable to vote.

And even when he punishes lawbreakers, he condemns them with symbolic or conditional fines. Misuses of this area and the bureaucratic restrictions that exiles face, violate Kosovo's fragile democracy, assess monitors and analysts.

European Alarm

“The first way and the first possibility of misusing the vote is by failing to clean up the electoral list itself with the fact that there are people on the list of voters who are certainly not going to vote, and that's a big risk of the whole system being manipulated, because it's enough to sign on the voter list and that person, whoever can be done, with the right to vote because of that”, points out Artan Murati, by the non-governmental KDI organization, which in October of last year released the report <2> Each vote should be worth”.

Numerous shortcomings have been highlighted, with particular emphasis on the possibility of misusing the names of dead citizens and exiles on the voters' list.