Serbia Reruns Its Election at 53 Polling Stations, and the New Assembly’s Clock Waits on the Count

Serbia held a repeat vote at 53 of its 8,392 polling stations on Sunday 1 November, covering 24,438 registered voters, and no final result of the 25 October parliamentary election can be declared until those ballots are counted.

The Republic Electoral Commission, known as RIK, ordered the rerun at its 72nd session on 28 October, chaired by its president, Vladimir Dimitrijević. At 31 stations the local commissions had found that the result could not be determined; at the other 22 the vote was annulled, Telegraf reported. Polls were open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The stations are spread across 24 municipalities and cities, according to the station list published by Srpske.rs; Aleksinac had eight, Vladičin Han seven and Majdanpek five.

The rerun follows an election the Student List won, and which Aleksandar Vučić conceded on election night. Its purpose is narrower than its timing suggests. It completes the record that the constitution’s deadlines are counted from.

Can the rerun change the result?

Not the winner. With 8,338 of the 8,392 stations processed, RIK’s preliminary figures gave the Student List 2,349,689 votes, or 53.04 per cent, and the United Serbia list built around Mr Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party 1,726,375, or 38.97 per cent, Srpske.rs reported. By this publication’s arithmetic the gap is 623,314 votes, about 25.5 times the entire electorate of the 53 rerun stations. Those stations are 0.63 per cent of the national total.

Seat counts are less settled. Ivan Šebek, a member of the commission, told the FoNet agency that after votes from abroad were processed the Student List had 141 seats, one more than before, and United Serbia 103, one fewer, Srpske.rs reported on 28 October. He said the figures were not final until RIK proclaimed them, and that five or six records from abroad were still outstanding, among them Chicago, where polls had opened at 1 a.m. local time under a commission decision this publication examined before the vote. A majority in the 250-seat National Assembly is 126.

What clock does the final result start?

Two constitutional ones, and they run in sequence. Article 101 of the Constitution of Serbia requires the first sitting of the new Assembly “not later than 30 days from the day of declaring the final election results.” Article 109 then provides that the Assembly “shall be dissolved if it fails to elect the Government within 90 days from the day of its constitution.” Neither period begins until RIK declares the final result, and the final result cannot be declared until the repeat vote is in.

The election law adds its own steps. Local commissions have 96 hours after polls close to send their consolidated reports, and RIK then has 96 hours from receiving all of them to publish its overall report, according to the summary published by Srpske.rs. Šebek said he did not expect the repeat vote to delay the result significantly. “There is no reason for concern or tension,” he said.

The table below is this publication’s calculation of the latest dates the published deadlines allow, assuming each body uses its full period. Earlier completion at any step moves every later date forward.

Why does the calendar matter?

Because one of the clocks is already running and does not wait for the count. Ana Brnabić, the speaker of the outgoing Assembly, has exercised the presidency since Mr Vučić resigned it in September, and Article 120 allows the speaker to replace the president “for maximum three months.” The presidential election must fall inside that period. The parliamentary timetable runs from the final declaration; the presidential one runs from 28 September. On the full periods in the table, the new Assembly could first sit as late as 9 December, less than three weeks before the acting presidency’s limit.

Whoever chairs the new Assembly matters to that overlap, as this publication noted on 26 October: the constitution gives the replacement role to the office of Chairman of the National Assembly, not to Ms Brnabić by name. A new Assembly elects a new chairman at a sitting that cannot be held until the final result is declared.

When this publication checked on the morning of 2 November, the most recent session listed on RIK’s website was its 73rd, on 29 October, and the commission had published neither the rerun results nor the final allocation of seats. On the published deadlines it has until 9 November to do so. On the published arithmetic, the 24,438 voters of 1 November will not decide who governs Serbia. They decide when the counting of days begins.