Analysis of Electoral Law Amendments

On April 21, 2026, proposals to amend four laws entered parliamentary procedure: the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament, the Law on Local Elections, the Law on the Constitutional Court, and the Law on the Election of the President of the Republic. The process of amending electoral laws was initiated on February 2, 2026, despite the Reform Agenda having stipulated that amendments to key laws in this area were to be completed by the end of 2025.

The aforementioned laws were adopted on 20 May 2026, published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia on 22 May 2026, and entered into force on 31 May 2026, except for the provisions relating to mandatory training for members of election administration bodies, which shall enter into force on 1 January 2028.

The preparation process is accompanied by serious procedural and institutional shortcomings, including a lack of clarity regarding who drafted the initial proposal and the criteria used to formulate it. The proposals were forwarded to an inactive Working Group, whose members from civil society and the opposition had previously withdrawn due to a lack of transparency and procedural violations, repeating the same patterns. Following multiple revisions based on ODIHR opinions, the proposals were formally submitted to parliamentary procedure.

Although the amendments are formally presented as alignment with ODIHR and Council of Europe recommendations, their scope and content indicate a selective approach. Within the four laws under amendment, key provisions relating to the prevention of electoral abuses and electoral engineering remain unchanged. The adopted measures largely consist of partial and technical amendments, while recommendations addressing the structural deficiencies of the electoral process are, for the most part, being overlooked. .

Against this backdrop, three of the adopted measures are particularly noteworthy due to the risks they pose in light of the current socio-political context in Serbia.  Although these solutions are grounded in comparatively accepted democratic practices, their application under existing institutional conditions may produce the opposite effects – from additional abuses in the electoral process to a further erosion of trust in the judiciary.

First, the removal of the ‘one voter, one declaration of support’ restriction for electoral lists, viewed in the context of long-standing and documented abuses of support declarations in previous electoral cycles, carries a significant risk of further electoral engineering and additional erosion of the integrity of the electoral process. Such an amendment may facilitate the nomination of so-called proxy lists and further encourage manipulative practices. Nevertheless, despite these negative implications in the domestic context, in comparative practice the removal of this restriction is generally regarded as a measure that can contribute to strengthening political pluralism – however, under existing circumstances in Serbia, such a solution can hardly be applied in a manner that would achieve these positive effects.

Second, the solution allowing a group of citizens to run as a national minority list creates additional scope for manipulation. Given that national minority lists are subject to more favorable conditions for nomination and obtaining mandates (fewer support signatures required and a lower natural threshold), this amendment may lead to an artificial increase in the number of electoral lists and affect the distribution of mandates in a way that does not reflect authentic political representation of minority communities.

Third, the introduction of urgency in proceedings before the Constitutional Court in electoral disputes represents a normatively justified solution. However, its practical effectiveness remains questionable in light of the Court’s longstanding operational problems, including inefficiency and the perception of its institutional bias, particularly given recent changes in the composition of judges.

Additionally, certain solutions that CRTA assessed positively – such as specifying the body to which complaints in the electoral process should be submitted and more clearly defining deadlines for challenging decisions on electoral lists – although envisaged in the initial phase, did not ultimately enter parliamentary procedure.

Overview of the amendments

The proposals to amend the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament, the Law on Local Elections, the Law on the Constitutional Court, and the Law on the Election of the President of the Republic entered parliamentary procedure on April 21, 2026. ODIHR issued its opinion on these amendments on two occasions, based on which the proposals were further revised. They were adopted in the following form, addressing the following issues:

• Removal of the ‘one voter, one declaration of support’ restriction for electoral lists

(Relates to ODIHR Recommendation No. 11) 

The restriction whereby a voter could previously sign a declaration of support for only one electoral list is abolished.

• Introduction of mandatory training for members of polling boards and local electoral commissions 

(Relates to ODIHR Priority Recommendation No. 2) 

Mandatory training has been introduced for members of polling boards and local electoral commissions. The certificate of completed training is valid for three years, with the possibility of expiring earlier in certain circumstances. The provisions regulating this matter will enter into force on January 1, 2028, meaning that members of local electoral commissions and polling boards will only be required to hold a certificate of completed training for elections held after that date.

 

• Status of national minority electoral lists 

(Relates to ODIHR Recommendation No. 20) 

The amendment ostensibly tightens the criteria for obtaining the status of a national minority list (it sets conditions regarding the name of the electoral list and the obligation for the political party/coalition to be registered in a special register of national minority parties), but the proposed solution also allows a group of citizens to submit a national minority list (the condition being that the electoral list of the group of citizens includes the name of the national minority whose interests it represents).

 

• Urgency of proceedings before the Constitutional Court 

(Relates to ODIHR Recommendation No. 24) 

A three-day deadline has been introduced for electoral administration bodies to submit the required documentation to the Constitutional Court, while the Constitutional Court would have 20 days from receipt of all required documentation to decide on an electoral dispute, while the deadline for repeating the entire electoral process or a part thereof is 30 days from the date the Constitutional Court’s decision is delivered to the competent authority.

 

• Removal of grounds for automatic rejection of electoral lists (without the possibility of rectifying deficiencies) 

(Relates to ODIHR Recommendation No. 12) 

In cases where grounds previously existed for the automatic rejection of an electoral list, the new amendments introduced a 48-hour deadline to rectify deficiencies.

 

Although the adopted amendments aim to address certain ODIHR recommendations (Nos. 2, 11, 12, 20, and 24), and some of them are partially or fully aligned with CRTA’s recommendations, they are predominantly technical, that is, “cosmetic”, in nature.

The amendments do not address the key structural problems of the electoral process in Serbia, which CRTA has identified on the basis of findings from its observation missions conducted at all electoral levels. These findings point, among other things, to the existence of proxy electoral lists, the forgery of voter signatures, an insufficient level of professionalism in the electoral administration, and the ineffective protection of voting rights.