Kosovo Diaspora NGO Slates Court Ruling on Late Postal Votes

An NGO that connects members of the big Kosovo diaspora condemned a decision of the Kosovo Constitutional Court that annulled a former Supreme Court ruling that allowed diaspora postal votes that arrived after the deadline to be counted. Parliamentary elections were last held in Kosovo on 6 October 2019.

On Thursday, the court ruled that a Supreme Court decision of October 30, 2019, that allowed the counting of the votes of diaspora that arrived by post after the deadline, was unconstitutional.

"The Constitutional Court, like the ECAP [Election Complaints and Appeals Panel] during the 2019 elections, a priori rejects votes received after the deadline set by the CEC [Central Election Committee] regardless of the circumstances that caused the delay," Lirim Krasniqi, co-executive director of Germin, told BIRN, summing up the ruling.

The Constitutional Court said the Supreme Court ruling had violated Article 3 of Protocol No 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the right to vote, as well as Article 45 of the Kosovo Constitution, on freedom of election and participation.

"State institutions support the possibility of every person participating in public activities and everyone's right to democratically influence decisions of public bodies," Article 45 of the Constitution writes.

The court also ruled that the ECAP decision not to count diaspora votes that arrived by post after the deadline was in line with the European Convention of Human Rights and the Kosovo constitution.

Krasniqi, however, said the law on elections should now be changed, "especially the articles relating to voting from abroad".

"Citizens of Kosovo abroad should be able, besides voting by mail, to vote physically in diplomatic missions," he...