US Embassy welcomes decision to publish list of registered voters from abroad

Ambasada SAD u BiH

The US Embassy in Bosnia urged citizens to check and report any irregularities they might find on the list of registered voters abroad for Bosnia’s 2020 local election, welcoming the decision by Bosnia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) to publish it and calling it “a key opportunity for citizens to prevent their identities from being used in fraud.”

Bosnia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) decided to publish the list of registered voters abroad on its website for the first time ever at a session at the beginning of October.

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On Tuesday, the CEC said that it came to the decision in light of numerous complaints about irregularities concerning the voter registration process in previous elections.

The institution also said it received an enormous number of complaints concerning irregularities in voting from abroad since the list was published and that it managed to review each one of them and took 27.960 names from the list so far.

There are 101,771 people registered as voting from abroad in the 2020 local election, which is to take place on November 15. In the previous election in 2018, there were 77,814 names on that list.

“We fully support the efforts of the BiH Central Election Commission to improve the transparency and integrity of the upcoming local elections, especially in the process of registering voters for voting outside BiH,” the Public Relations department of the US Embassy in Bosnia told N1.

It said that the list the CEC published “is a key opportunity for citizens to prevent their identities from being used in fraud.”

“We call on all citizens to check their data and report any irregularities. We also call on the CEC BiH to, in cooperation with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, decisively investigate and take action in cases of documented fraud. Everyone has a role in preserving the integrity of elections,” it said.