The nongovernmental election-monitoring organisation GONG issued a statement on Tuesday asking the Ministry of Administration why voter registers were managed by two different firms, as shown by the Public Procurement Register that was compiled and posted online last week by the NGO Vjetrenjaca (Windmill).
By examining the Public Procurement Register, GONG found that the Ministry of Administration had awarded the job of providing technical support for maintaining the voter registers and registers of births, marriages and deaths to the state-owned firm APIS d.o.o. in a 2009 public tender following a government decision.
However, in 2010, without a public tender, the Ministry awarded the work relating to the voter registers to the privately owned firm MCS d.o.o. This firm was awarded contracts to process data for the verification of signatures gathered as part of a trade union initiative on calling referendums, to provide IT support for the conduct of elections for ethnic minority councils, and to provide IT support for the forthcoming parliamentary election.
GONG asked the Ministry why the voter registers were managed by two different firms and to what extent such an arrangement affected the updating of the voter registers in real time and personal data protection. It also asked the Ministry how much this arrangement cost and why the arrangement with one of the firms had been made without a public tender, contrary to the government decision.
GONG said it held the Ministry of Administration and the Ministry of the Interior responsible for their failure to update the voter registers.
"The result is the unrealistic number of voters and growing public distrust of the accuracy of the voter registers. We, therefore, expect the new government to adopt a new election law and a single register of citizens that will resolve problems in keeping the records of residence and voter registers," GONG said.
