CEC urged to review decision on document design

The CEC members' vote for the bypass of new designs was reasoned by calling in short terms, memorisation of the current voter's ballot, major changes in the new design and confusion that could be caused by voters.

The new design, with civil society initiative, was compiled by a group of field experts, as well as tested by 1,200 citizens, resulting in smaller percentages of invalid ballots. The same design was supported by the CEC Secretariat. Also, regular election deadlines are optimum for such an advance of visual ballotation, through which problematic parts of the ballot are addressed, especially knowing that no public information campaign containing the design of the ballot has yet been developed. The use of the same ballot since 2007, however, has not caused it to be commemorated by voters, but, rather, the number of invalid ballots has steadily increased.

This CEC decision does not contribute to the improvement of the election process, as well as to a repeat recommendation now, and how many election processes from local election monitoring missions reports, as well as international ones. This decision also threatens to repeat the local election situation of 2017, where even as a result of the design of ballotings, about 80 thousand invalid ballots had been recorded.

Therefore, Democracy in Action requires that this CEC decision be revised and changed. Advancing elements of the election process, especially those who have direct influence on voting, lowering invalid mistakes and votes, facilitating voting for all voters' categories, should be priorities for members of the CEC.