go to the original language article
Sarajevo (Fena) – Local elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held on October 6, as decided by the members of the Central Electoral Commission of BiH (CEC), and more than 3.4 million citizens of BiH will be able to elect 143 new mayors and municipal chiefs, as well as 3200 members of municipal and city councils and the Brčko district assembly.
The elections will be conducted based on the current Electoral Law and its technical amendments imposed in March by the High Representative of the International community, Christian Schmidt.
As Schmidt said at the time, these amendments aim to better protect the integrity of the electoral process, including the introduction of new technologies such as surveillance cameras at polling places, biometric identification checks of voters, and scanning of ballots for vote counting.
According to the president of the CEC, Irena Hadžiabdić, this means implementing four pilot projects that will be realized with the help of USAID and the European Union.
– We will test the use of electoral technologies through four pilot projects at the local elections. The first pilot project is the authentication and transfer of results at the polling place. We plan to implement it in about ten municipalities at 165 polling stations. The second pilot project is testing the use of optical scanners, i.e., the automatic counting of voting ballots. It is planned in about six municipalities at 145 polling stations – said Hadžiabdić.
The third pilot project is biometric identification and authentication of voters at all regular polling places in the Brčko District.
– The expected total costs of the Local Elections in 2024 will amount to about 19 million KM. For activities carried out by the CEC, 7,410,000 KM has already been approved, which we originally requested. The Central Electoral Commission also requested an additional 4,173,000 KM for the engagement of additional staff and the implementation of pilot projects related to new electoral technologies – stated Hadžiabdić.
She added that they are still awaiting approval for these additional funds.
The announcement of local elections in BiH came at a time when the Republic of Srpska is trying to challenge the authority of the CEC and plans to independently conduct elections in that entity, which is why a special electoral law has been passed in the National Assembly of RS. However, the constitutionality of this law will be decided by the Constitutional Court of RS, and then probably by the Constitutional Court of BiH. (8.5.)