Electronic vote counting

The Democrats and the Socialists agreed through consensus to take a decision at the Electoral Reform Commission. Both parties passed the amends in principle, leaving space to change specific points when the final voting of the electronic ballot count system will be approved.

This is considered as one of the most reforming and transforming steps for the election process in Albania. The changes sanction that the ballots will not be counted by people, but by an Electronic Counting System. It remains to decide the way how they will count ballots manually if the system creates problems.

According to the amends approved with consensus, this electronic system that will count and assess the ballots automatically will also bring the results of the next Parliamentary elections.

Another important sanction that was agreed on at the Electoral Reform Commission was that the decision for using this electronic system will be taken by the Central Election Commission.

The importance stands on the fact that the CEC decision will require qualified majority, which means an obligatory consensus at the CEC.

This amend has another important aspect, which is that the election of the CEC leader by the political parties will not change. This was not clarified by the meeting of some days for the electoral reform commission. Besides the fact that the amends have details about every step of the electronic assessing of the ballots, the CEC will be obliged by law to test the electronic system in the presence of the media, two months before the election day.

The CEC has resolved some other disagreements that have been met in the past elections, removing private buildings from the list of premises that will be used for voting. The buildings will be given on extraordinary cases, with a special authorization from the CEC.

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