Polling stations - crta.plus

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Polling stations in the country

The number of polling stations in the country is almost the same as at the 2023 elections, but until the closing of the register the public cannot systematically check the areas they cover.

According to the Republic Electoral Commission (REC), local election commissions designated 8,210 polling stations in the country (as of 28 September), and the REC a further 29 in institutions for the execution of criminal sanctions and 93 abroad. In the 2023 elections, voting took place at 8,273 polling stations, 8,163 of them in the country. The final number depends on the polling stations for voters from Kosovo and Metohija: in 2023, 52 polling stations were relocated to Vranje, Raška, Kuršumlija and Tutin. Decisions of the local election commissions of 19 September 2026 designated 140 polling stations in Kosovo, and following the REC's decision of 5 October, on a proposal from the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, they are again being relocated to the same four municipalities.

Local election commissions were required to designate polling stations by 19 September. By that day, 149 of the 178 primary decisions had been published on the REC website, and a further 19 over the weekend and on the first working day after the deadline. Ten decisions were published between 22 and 30 September, and by 3 October a further 15 decisions amending them. The date of publication is not necessarily the date on which a decision was adopted. Of the polling stations in the country, 49 are in private houses and business premises, most of them in Leskovac, Sjenica and Surdulica. The law permits this only exceptionally, and in villages without public buildings it is sometimes the only option, but the exception ought to be reasoned.

The decisions are published individually, as PDF documents that are not machine-readable, so the areas covered by polling stations cannot be compared systematically with 2023 until a consolidated, and often tidier, document is published. In 2023, a single overview of these areas for the whole of Serbia became available only with the decision closing the register, two weeks before the elections. Changes to the areas covered were identified at that point in 22 municipalities and cities. Without timely publication of these areas in machine-readable form, establishing in good time whether the changes are justified is made considerably more difficult.

Out-of-country voting

Out-of-country voting attracted the most public attention in the preceding period. Interest among voters in the diaspora in voting in the forthcoming elections is unprecedented. More than 106,000 decisions were issued for voting at a place of temporary residence abroad, 2.7 times the number of voters abroad entered in the register in 2023. The increase in the number of polling stations has not kept pace with this growth, however - 15% more polling stations have been opened than in 2023. The REC decided on polling stations without data on the number of registrations by city, which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not provide to it, following repeated requests from members. The final decision does not cover around 22,000 registered voters. As of the cut-off date for this report, it remains unclear where they will vote. Thirty diplomats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a public statement taking the position that the number of polling stations proposed does not correspond to the considerable interest among voters and that the ministry had taken some decisions unprofessionally.

Registrations and the network of polling stations

By the expiry of the deadline on 3 October, municipal administrations had issued 106,306 decisions on requests to vote from abroad. On 5 October, on a proposal from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the REC designated 93 polling stations in 37 countries.

Table 5.1. The number of voters voting from abroad has almost tripled, while the number of polling stations has risen by 15%

	2023	2026	Change
Voters (2023: entered; 2026: decisions)	39,270	106,124	2.7 times
Polling stations	81	93	+12 (15%)
Countries with a polling station	35	37	+2
Voters per polling station	485	1,143	2.4 times

Source: REC, 2023 election results by polling station; the Commission for the audit of the voter register, letter to the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government of 5 October 2026; REC, decision of 5 October 2026.

Of the 12 polling stations by which the network for voting abroad was expanded, nine were opened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which now has 28 of the 93 polling stations (30%), even though registrations there grew the most slowly: by a factor of 1.4 according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs tables, against 2.5 in the rest of the world. There are 681 registered voters per polling station in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and 1,108 in European countries outside the territory of the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, 13 polling stations used in 2023, where 2,588 voters were then entered in the register, were discontinued, among them those in Abu Dhabi, Herceg Novi, Geneva, Vancouver and Bratislava. For the first time since its embassy opened in 2013, apart from 2020 because of the pandemic, the United Arab Emirates has no polling station, and nor does any other country in the Middle East. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs submitted its proposal without explanation and repeatedly ignored requests from REC members that it set out clearly and transparently what had guided it in planning the polling stations. Without reasoned criteria and data by city, it is not possible to assess whether this distribution is justified.

Deciding without data

The law leaves only two days between the expiry of the deadline for registrations and the deadline for the decision on polling stations. At five meetings, members of the REC's Working Group on voting abroad asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for data on the number of registrations by city and country and for the criteria for assigning voters, but did not receive them. Neither the representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor those of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government attended the last meeting, on 4 October. The law obliges state bodies to provide the bodies administering the elections with the data they need for their work. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that, besides the number of registrations, distance, the presence of a diplomatic and consular mission, security, staffing and premises were also taken into account, but it gave a specific explanation only for Lebanon. The REC adopted the proposal after midnight, with 28 of the 29 votes of the members present. Critics of the proposal also voted in favour, because rejecting it, with the deadline about to expire, would have meant that there would be no polling stations abroad at all. Without data by city the REC could not check whether the proposal met the statutory requirements, so it appears that the REC decided blind on polling stations for more than 100,000 voters. A possible security argument is also difficult to reconcile with the choice of premises: 34 of the 93 polling stations are not in embassies and consulates but in schools, cultural centres, associations, a hotel and the premises of private companies, while no polling station was opened in the United Arab Emirates, where there is an embassy, or in Herceg Novi, in a well-known consulate building.

If it can be said that the REC was in an unenviable position in deciding to accept the proposal on polling stations abroad, the same cannot be said of its acceptance of a second proposal by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, equally disruptive for the electoral process in the diaspora. That same evening, by 20 votes to 7, the REC decided to accept that voting at all polling stations would run from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Serbian time, on the grounds that this prevents disinformation and results from abroad becoming available before the end of voting in Serbia. At 13 polling stations in the Americas, Asia and Oceania, with around 10,000 registrations, voting will therefore take place partly at night, in New Zealand for example from 7 p.m. on Sunday to 8 a.m. on Monday. This abandoned the practice applied at every election since 2016: voting from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time, and a day earlier in countries to the west of Serbia. The law clearly requires voting to last 13 hours and to end no later than 8 p.m. Serbian time, and it explicitly prohibits the announcement of results from abroad before the end of voting in Serbia. CRTA assessed that the decision exceeds the REC's powers and directly jeopardises the exercise of the voting rights of voters who have already shown a clear interest in taking part in the elections.

Voters not covered by the decision

According to data set out by the Commission in its letter to the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, 106,306 decisions were issued, while the REC's decision assigned 83,523 voters to polling stations. Around 22,000 voters, that is, one in five of those registered, are therefore not covered by the decision on polling stations. The Commission asked the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government for an urgent statement on their legal status. At the Commission's session on 6 October, Assistant Minister Jovan Knežević stated that these voters would, in all likelihood, be assigned to the nearest polling station in their country of residence, but he could not say with any certainty what would happen to voters from countries where no polling station has been opened. A voter assigned to a polling station abroad does not appear in the extract from the register for their place of permanent residence in Serbia and can vote only at that station. The question of where the 22,000 voters for whom no place to vote has been provided stand in the voter register remains unanswered up to the closing of the voter register at midnight on 9 October.

On 5 October, CRTA called on the REC to repeal the decision on voting hours and restore the model applied since 2016, to request and publish data on the number of registrations by city and country and, on that basis, to supplement the decision on polling stations, as it had done at earlier elections.

On the night the decision was being taken, within 18 hours, 577 citizens from 24 countries sent 615 letters, in an organised action, to the REC, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ODIHR mission, embassies and CRTA. They asked for polling stations in their own cities and for voting by local time, citing the established and sufficient number of voters who had registered to vote from abroad. On 6 October, citizens' groups from the diaspora addressed an appeal to international institutions, and “Students in Blockade” announced a gathering in front of the REC for 7 October under the name “Not tonight” (“Neće moći ove noći”), together with a joint filing of complaints.

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