CEC decides on full recount of votes

The Central Election Commission has decided to conduct a full recount of all votes at polling stations in 28 municipalities. It has also been decided to dismiss political representatives from the Municipal Election Commission in Prizren, where, according to the head of the CEC, Kreshnik Radoniqi, the largest differences in votes for candidates for deputies were observed.

Previously, in these 28 municipalities, the CEC had decided to recount only 10 percent of the polling stations, while in 10 other municipalities it decided for a full recount.

The January 19 decision comes after a partial recount revealed large differences in the votes for candidates for MPs in the early parliamentary elections of December 28, 2025.

After the discovery of these irregularities, parties and civil society organizations demanded a full recount of the votes.

During the meeting, the head of the CEC, Kreshnik Radoniqi, said that the partial recount report was analyzed at the meeting held by the CEC Operations Council. According to him, the difference in votes for political parties is minimal and "negligible", while the difference in votes for candidates has a "high degree of inaccuracy".

“Prizren is the most extreme case,” said Radoniqi, adding that 20,343 votes were deducted from the candidates for MPs during the recount. He said that in other municipalities, no major differences in the votes for candidates were observed.

Political party members on the CEC supported both recommendations, demanding that there be legal accountability for the deviation of the result.

At the meeting, a member of the Bosniak community, Almir Sahiti, requested that the recount include the votes of the diaspora. The CEC Chairman said that this proposal would be decided after the meeting, while several other members said that these votes had already been counted at the Counting and Results Center, where they also found discrepancies in the votes for candidates for deputies.

On January 13, the CEC began a full recount of votes in 10 municipalities (Dragash, Kaçanik, Leposaviq, Prizren, Skenderaj, Shtime, Ferizaj, Vushtrri, Mamushë and Ranilug), after verifying 2 percent of polling stations found discrepancies in the candidates' votes.

Meanwhile, now the full count will also take place in 28 other municipalities, where it was previously decided to count only 10 percent of the polling stations: Deçan, Gjakova, Gllogovc, Gjilan, Istog, Klina, Fushë-Kosovo Polje, Kamenica, South Mitrovica, Lipjan, Novo Brdo, Obiliq, Rahovec, Peja, Podujevo, Pristina, Shtërpcë, Suhareka, Viti, Zubin-Potok, Zvecan, Malisheva, Junik, Hani i Elezit, Gracanica, Partesh, Kllokot and North Mitrovica.

After ascertaining that there was a difference in votes for the candidates for deputies, the State Prosecutor was put into action on January 19. The national coordinator for elections, prosecutor Laura Pula, has asked the chief prosecutors in all basic prosecution offices, in all municipalities where the recount process has been completed, to "begin collecting the necessary information and provide relevant evidence that proves the commission of any criminal offense related to the electoral process."

A day ago, the Basic Prosecution Office of Prizren authorized the Police to identify those responsible for this discrepancy in votes.

Representatives of political parties, meanwhile, demanded full voting, while the coalition of organizations monitoring the electoral process in Kosovo, Democracy in Action (DnV), demanded a national-level investigation.

DnV said that the subject of investigations should not only be the commissioners, but also the candidates who "turn out to be beneficiaries of these inconsistencies and manipulations," DnV said.

On January 9, the CEC announced that the process of counting all votes had been completed. Regular votes were counted at municipal counting centers, while other votes, including those from the diaspora, were counted at the Counting and Results Center.

During the counting process, at municipal counting centers, each ballot goes through several checks: it is read aloud by a teller, displayed on the screen via camera, and recorded in the electronic system by another official, while a third person verifies the ballot.

However, the manipulation is said to take place at the stage of reading the votes for candidates. When a ballot belongs to a party, it also contains votes for several candidates. The teller can verbally change the number of the candidate voted for, replacing it with the number of another candidate.

Thus, the system registers a vote for the wrong candidate, even though the actual ballot shows something different. The number of votes per party does not change, only the number of votes for candidates within the same party changes.

Vote manipulation in Kosovo is a criminal offense. However, the non-governmental organization ÇOHU recently published research that showed that over 90 percent of cases of election manipulation end with suspended sentences or fines.

According to preliminary results, the Vetëvendosje Movement is the winner of the elections with over 51 percent of the votes. It is expected to have 57 seats in the tenth legislature.

The full recount of votes is expected to delay the constitution of the new composition of the Assembly and the formation of the new executive./ REL