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Thousands of votes in Kosovo with changes/ Partial recount raises suspicions of abuse

2026-01-17 17:26:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Thousands of votes in Kosovo with changes/ Partial recount raises suspicions of

The recount process of one-third of the polling stations for the December 28 early parliamentary elections has brought about noticeable changes in the votes of candidates for deputies since the first days.

So far, the recount process, which began on January 13, has been completed in 19 municipalities and 316 polling stations out of a total of 914 have been counted, according to the CEC's announcement of the counts as of today at 10:00.

However, even with so many recounted polling stations, the difference in votes for candidates within political parties is noticeable.

When just over 200 polling stations had been counted, Eugen Cakolli, from the Democratic Institute of Kosovo, had calculated that the changes amounted to almost 15 thousand votes and, according to a post he made on Facebook, the list of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) had the most changes.

So far, it appears that 7,719 ballots with votes for PDK had their votes for candidates modified. Next comes the Vetëvendosje Movement (LVV) with a difference of 2,947 votes, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) with 1,676 and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) with 639.

"These are substantial differences, especially since they appear in a context where the recount is taking place for only 1/3 of the polling stations nationwide. Worse, it is noticeable that the votes of these candidates have been changed mainly by the municipal centers from which these candidates come," Cakolli wrote.

At municipal counting centers, each ballot goes through several checks: it is read aloud by a teller, displayed on a screen via camera, and recorded in the electronic system by another official, while a third person verifies the ballot.

However, the manipulation is said to take place at the stage of reading the votes for candidates. When a ballot belongs to a party, it also contains votes for several candidates. The teller can verbally change the number of the candidate voted for, replacing it with the number of another candidate.

Thus, the system registers a vote for the wrong candidate, even though the actual ballot shows something different. The number of votes per party does not change, only the number of votes for candidates within the same party changes.

Cakolli had said earlier in the week that the counting process was not accompanied by detailed checks of the ballots, thus enabling manipulation, and that this was also influenced by the fact that the counting was carried out during the holidays.

According to Çohu and Cakolli, such forms of abuse have been observed in almost every electoral process in Kosovo and that the solution to this problem would be technological scanning of ballots instead of traditional counting by officials.

What are the consequences?

Recently, the non-governmental organization Çohu published research showing that over 90 percent of cases of electoral manipulation end with suspended sentences or fines.

This means that if an official is proven to have manipulated votes during the count, he is unlikely to be punished with prison for it.

But the consequences may be greater for the institutions, as the recount, which is expected to last up to two weeks, may further delay the establishment of new institutions, at a delicate time for the institutions.

The new parliament must hurry to pass international financial agreements for the country, as well as elect a new president by March 4, before Vjosa Osmani's term ends in April.

These deadlines may become even more difficult to achieve if a full recount is decided - which, however, according to Cakolli, remains the best option now that it has been proven that there were many changes in votes during the counting in municipal centers.

During the week, CEC spokesperson Valmir Elezi repeated for REL the message of CEC chairman Kreshnik Radoniqi that if possible manipulations with the votes of candidates within political entities are observed after the recount, the commission will take the members of the counting teams to the competent bodies. /REL