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Bylykbashi: DP has submitted amendments to the Parliament that enable broader diaspora voting

Bylykbashi: DP has submitted amendments to the Parliament that enable broader

At a press conference held by the deputy leader of the Democratic Party, Oerd Bylykbashi, and the secretary for legal affairs, Ivi Kaso, the amendments related to the expansion of the right to vote for Albanians abroad were presented.

Bylykbashi emphasized the importance of this proposal, which aims to change the rules for voter identification, affecting not only those who vote in Albania, but also Albanians living abroad.

According to the latest data, in the national civil status registers, Albania has around 4.7 million citizens, of whom 3.7 million have the right to vote.

This amendment aims to ensure proper representation for this large group of Albanians living abroad, by ensuring the expansion of voting rights.

Bylykbashi :

As you are aware, the Democratic Party and its deputies have officially submitted amendments to parliament that change the rules for voter identification in the voting process, not only with an impact on those who vote in Albania, but above all with an extraordinary impact on the effective, maximum expansion of the right to vote of those who vote from outside Albania.

With this amendment, which Mr. Kaso will explain later, we make possible a rule change that is consistent with this extraordinary reform that has been made in the right to vote in Albania, in expanding this right to half of the Albanian electorate.

To make this more clearly understood, that we are facing a situation that is not only important, but also critical for resolution now, I am forced to give you some figures that often fall outside the focus of daily debate.

The Republic of Albania has in its civil status registers, that is, in the national civil status register, about 4 million and 700 thousand citizens from 0 to whatever age they live, so there are 4 million and 700 thousand Albanian citizens. Of these, officially at this moment there are 3.7 million citizens with the right to vote. So they are over 18 years old.

On May 11, 3.7 million citizens have the right to vote, so about 1 million are between the ages of 0 and 18 and do not vote.

So these 3 million and 700 thousand citizens are about 79% of Albanian citizens with the right to vote.

In the Republic of Albania, according to the census and official data declared annually by INSTAT for the last census, in our opinion, the data is manipulated and not true. This figure is 2.4 million, meaning Albanian citizens from 0 to 18 years old and over 18 years old, there are 2.4 million people living in Albania.

I reiterate, in our judgment, in our information, and the data that came out, you know that INSTAT prolonged the data publication phase for a long time and clearly to manipulate this data.

There are less than 2.4 million, but we must consider that this figure also includes foreigners living in Albania, because this is the purpose of the census.

So the number of those officially living outside Albania, according to these official data, is 2.3 million Albanians. This number could be higher, it could be around 2.7 million.

Based on the official figure, of these 2.3 million living outside Albania, we must bear in mind that the majority of the population there is of adult age, emigration mainly consists of people who are able to work, that is, over 18 years old, who have left Albania.

The ratio of those with the right to vote is greater than the overall average ratio, i.e. greater than 79%.

So in our judgment, if we were to base ourselves solely on the official figure of 79% of the 3.7 million Albanians living abroad, there are no less than 1.8 million Albanians with the right to vote living outside Albania.

Considering that there are many students, people who have gone for work, or that the real figure is higher, this figure should be close to 2 million Albanians with the right to vote outside Albania.

It is a failure of this state, of this government, to have accurate data, or when it does have it, it manipulates it, but this is the reality. We are talking about more than half of Albanians who have the right to vote, to whom this reform that began in 2020 and was mostly perfected in 2024, gives the right to vote.

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