BIRN: Fier recount reveals vote trafficking within open political party lists

The reopening of ballot boxes for the May 11 parliamentary elections in the Fier region has revealed vote manipulation within the open lists of electoral subjects, with hundreds of votes going in favor of certain candidates of the Socialist Party and the coalition led by the Democratic Party.

The main beneficiary of this scheme turns out to be the socialist candidate, Ceno Klosi, who received over 900 more votes than were in the ballot box – almost half of which were diverted to the other socialist candidate, Klevis Jahjaj. Other socialist candidates on the open list also resulted in minus or plus votes from the process in lower numbers.

On the other hand, Democratic candidate Silvana Hasaj has been found to have received nearly 700 votes plus unfairly, while other candidates on the joint list of the "Alliance for a Greater Albania" coalition are recovering dozens of votes that were not recognized during the counting process.

Although the recount process does not appear to change the preliminary election result in this district nor the ranking of candidates on the open list for the SP and DP, the large number of votes cast raises serious questions about the election process itself.

The Socialist Party won this district, the second largest in the country with 400,000 voters, by a landslide on May 11, receiving 12 MPs, while the opposition coalition received 4 mandates.

The Socialist candidate, Ceno Klosi, who despite the decrease in votes continues to be the winner of the mandate of the deputy in this district, did not give a position on what happened. Asked by BIRN whether he condemned the actions of the tellers or whether he would demand an investigation into this, he said that it was not up to him, but to the CEC or the Prosecutor's Office.

Even candidate Klevis Jahaj, who turns out to be the one most penalized by the vote count, said he did not want to comment on the alienation of his votes.

Likewise, the political leader of the SP in Fier, Belinda Balluku, and the political leader of the DP, Gazment Bardhi, did not respond to requests for comment on the deformation of votes within the open list of electoral subjects until the publication of this article.

The recount of votes for several districts of the country, including Fier, was decided by the Complaints and Sanctions Commission after complaints from opposition parties challenging the results. While the process generally exposed human errors in other districts, in the Fier district a deliberate tendency of vote manipulation at the counting tables is observed.

KAS member Ledio Braho said that in this case it is not a matter of "human error" in counting, but of intentional alienation and this body will discuss and make a decision on the legal consequences of what happened.

"Either we will take it to the commissioner for further verification to extract the names of the enumerators for each of the VCs, or we will send the decision in writing to the Fier prosecutor's office," Braho told BIRN.

According to Braho, unlike Tirana, in Fier it has been found that there is considerable movement of votes between candidates within entities, especially among the Socialist Party candidates. “Such movements serve as an indication that the GNV has favored certain candidates to the detriment of other candidates,” he commented.

The tellers and commissioners who serve in the electoral process are people chosen by the electoral entities themselves according to a political balancing formula between the parties.

Civil society organizations monitoring the electoral process consider the results of the recount in Fier as a distortion of the will of voters at the political behest of parties and are demanding a criminal investigation.

"The Fier recount should be accompanied by a criminal investigation into the problematic CEAZs, to bring to justice the party vote traffickers, who have essentially distorted the will of the citizens, as in this case we are not dealing with a human error, but with a political order," said Rigels Xhemollari, head of the "Citizen Center".

According to him, what happened in Fier reinforces the need for depoliticization of the election administration.

“In the hands of party tellers, there is no security, transparency and integrity,” suggests Xhemollari, adding that “tampering the vote, even within the party, undermines the entire electoral process.” /BIRN