Cakolli: Around 80 thousand candidate votes were manipulated throughout Kosovo
The recount of votes from the December 28 elections in Kosovo has revealed significant irregularities in the counting of preferential votes for candidates for MPs, according to data published by Eugen Cakolli.
“In Kosovo, there were about 900 thousand valid votes for political entities,” Cakolli wrote, explaining that each voter had the right to vote for up to ten candidates for deputies. According to him, this has led to “the total number of preferential votes for candidates reaching about 6.8 million,” while “on average, each voter marked about seven candidates on the ballot.”
Cakolli emphasizes that from the recount of over 50% of polling stations at the Counting and Results Center (CNR), "around 80 thousand candidate votes have resulted to be incorrect and incorrectly counted at the Municipal Counting Centers."
According to him, after the recount process, "47,619 votes were removed from candidates because they had been added to them during the initial count", while "32,018 votes were added to candidates because they had previously been removed irregularly".
Speaking about the distribution by political entities, Cakolli explains that "approximately 40 thousand votes belong to PDK candidates, around 15 thousand to LVV, around 11 thousand to LDK and around 4 thousand to AAK."
"Over 80% of these votes come from the municipality of Prizren alone," he wrote, adding that Malisheva and Podujeva are next, which has so far only been partially recounted.
Cakolli warns that changes to the voting and counting system have made the process more susceptible to abuse.
"The increase in the number of preferential votes to 10 candidates, along with the centralization of counting in Municipal Counting Centers, has made the process much more vulnerable to abuse," he stressed.
According to Cakolli, when data "is processed by a small number of people – who in some cases turn out to be family members or close associates of the candidates – interference can produce major deviations in the results."
