According to the CRTA election observation mission, voter turnout at the Belgrade City Council elections by 10 am is seven percent.
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The opening of polling stations for the Belgrade City Council elections went mainly in accordance with established procedures, the CRTA election observation mission stated. A total of 1.606.931 citizens has the right to vote in Belgrade elections.
After more than 20 days, the City Electoral Commission (CEC) have not approved domestic observers to attend the CEC sessions and monitor the work of this electoral body. Even though the CEC confirmed that CRTA and CeSID fulfilled legal requirements as domestic observers on January 17th 2018, the CEC did not provide written authorization to monitor CEC sessions. CEC did not included in the agenda requests for monitoring the work of electoral bodies submitted by the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM) and Citizens on Watch for more than few weeks.
The CRTA observation mission Citizens on Watch started today the long-term monitoring of the electoral process in 17 Belgrade municipalities. A total of 50 long term observers, trained in accordance with international standards, observe and gather information about the pre-election campaign, potential irregularities and media coverage of the pre-election campaign.
Following its systematic observation of the elections in previous three years, CRTA developed 60 detailed recommendations for improvement of electoral conditions, also available on the gradjaninastrazi.rs website. At the conference, CRTA presented the recommendations which could influence improvements if addressed by the 2020 elections and which enjoy the greatest citizen support.
CRTA presented recommendations for improvement of electoral conditions by 2020 at the conference held on March 25, 2019 at the Media Center Belgrade. Following its systematic observation of the elections in previous three years, CRTA developed 60 detailed recommendations for improvement of electoral conditions, also available on the gradjaninastrazi.rs website. At the conference, CRTA presented the recommendations which could influence improvements if addressed by the 2020 elections and which enjoy the greatest citizen support.
The quality of election process on the Election Day was not in line with international standards for free and fair elections. Serious breaches of electoral procedures were recorded at eight percent of polling stations, while occurances such as evidencing voters in parallel lists and bringing groups of voters to polling stations to cast a vote were recorded in front of seven percent of polling stations, the CRTA election observation mission stated. In comparison with 2017 presidential and 2016 parliamentary elections, the percentage of recorded irregularities at polling stations is higher.
According to 81 percent of processed data within the CRTA’s election observation sample, the list „Aleksandar Vucic – Zato sto volimo Beograd“ won 44,9 percent of votes. With 19 percent of votes the list lead by Dragan Djilas came second, followed by the list of Aleksandar Sapic with 8,8 percent and coalition SPS-Jedinstvena Srbija with six percent of votes. All remaining electoral contestants did not pass the threshold.
Following the closing of polling stations, CRTA observers were restricted to monitor the vote count at three polling stations. Although a half an hour later observers were ultimatelly allowed to observe this process at two polling stations, these developments disable observers to evidence and report on the accuracy of voting results from these polling stations, since they were not present at the polling stations the entire period of the vote count process.
