13 November 2018 – Balkans Policy Research Group in partnership with Institute for Development Policy INDEP) has published an in depth report with solid recommendations on Election Reform.

Election Reform is one of the big topics discussed in Kosovo in recent years. Local factors, in particular civil society and the international community, continue to demand that Kosovo needs to undertake substantial reform of the electoral framework. However, after a number of efforts, political parties have proven they are unwilling to pass reforms. New elections, mostly snap elections, are held and then rated as improved compared to the previous election. However, this is not the case in the northern municipalities and other Serb majority municipalities in the south where the elections since 2013 have been consistently manipulated through Belgrade’s influence.

It is hard to expect any rapid change of political stance in terms of reform, much less, when the political scene is dealing with other important topics. Therefore, in the absence of a deep reform of the electoral system, the report Kosovo and Elections: What can be improved?, addresses the problems of the current system and recommends improvements within the electoral law so that the election administration process and the results process are made in the most efficient way.

These improvements, as elaborated in the report, do not require much political debate, can be easily accomplished, and can have a significant impact on increasing confidence in the election process, eliminating delays and quicker processing of results.

This report has been researched and published in partnership with the Institute for Development Policy (INDEP). This project was implemented with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (managed by the Kosovar Civil Society Foundation (KCSF) and the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway.