MACEDONIA: PRIMER ON PROCEDURAL ASPECTS OF

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 SKOPJE 000074

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

STATE FOR EUR/SCE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM MK
SUBJECT: MACEDONIA: PRIMER ON PROCEDURAL ASPECTS OF
MARCH/APRIL PRESIDENTIAL AND MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

REF: 09 SKOPJE 49

SUMMARY:


1. (SBU) Just nine months after holding parliamentary
elections marked by violence, intimidation and serious
irregularities, Macedonia will hold its first-ever concurrent
presidential and mayoral/municipal elections, with the first
round on March 22 and second on April 5. With Euro-Atlantic
integration progress at a standstill, all eyes are on
preparations for the upcoming campaign and elections, and all
parties know that these elections must be markedly better
than the last. Political aspects of the Presidential
(reftel) and local (septel) elections notwithstanding, there
are many procedural challenges to jointly administering
presidential and mayoral/municipal elections. The State
Electoral Commission (SEC),Municipal Electoral Commissions
(MECs) and Local Electoral Boards (LEBs) have been
re-constituted under tight timelines, and face the challenges
of time and human resources to sufficiently train and prepare
ahead of the elections. This primer provides an overview of
the procedural aspects of the upcoming elections. End
summary.

Brief Campaign
--------------

2. (U) The official campaign period lasts only twenty days,
beginning March 2. Parties are subject to fines for any
political rallies, advertisements or posters ahead of the
campaign period. There is a one-day media blackout period on
March 21, and rallies and advertising are not allowed on that
day.

Elections Oversight: SEC, MECs and LEBs
-------------- -

3. (SBU) The State Electoral Commission (SEC),the 85
Municipal Electoral Commissions (MECs) and the nearly 3000
Local Electoral Boards (LEBs) are charged with the procedural
aspects of administering elections. The SEC was
re-constituted in December 2008, with four of its seven
members remaining for another term. The SEC then established
the MECs from a pared-down list of possible members, since
100 MEC members implicated in electoral fraud in the June
2008 elections were dismissed from service. The newly
reformed MECs in turn constituted the nearly 3000 LEBs by the
end of January. Changes to the electoral code altered the
make-up of the LEBs for the March/April elections, with the
requirement that two members from the parties in the
government that received the most votes in the June 2008
elections (VMRO-DPMNE and DUI) and the two members from the
opposition parties that received the most votes in the June
elections (SDSM and DPA) be included in each of the LEBs,
with the remaining six LEB members named from lists of public
sector employees. The return to including political party
representatives in the LEBs (after only a single instance )
the June 2008 elections -- of constituting the LEBs
exclusively from public sector employees) does little to
lessen concerns about political pressure and influence on the
LEBs, a serious problem in the June 2008 elections.


4. (SBU) Training for the MECs began in the first week of
February, and Embassy representatives participated in a
number of the trainings throughout the country, reinforcing
the importance of free and fair elections and reminding MEC
members of the critical importance of these elections, and
the watchful eye of many international observers. The MECs
will begin training the LEBs in coming weeks, and unlike in
previous elections, all LEB members must complete training
before serving on the LEBs.

Presidential Election Procedures
--------------

5. (U) Presidential elections are held in two rounds, with
the whole country as a single voting district. To be
included on the ballot, a candidate must get signatures from
10,000 voters or 30 members of parliament, a threshold
challenging for some potential candidates. A candidate
could be elected in a single round only by securing 50% 1
vote of the total number of registered voters. The bloated
voter list (nearly 1.8 million registered voters for a
population of 2.1 million) and high number of presidential
candidates (seven this time, between four and seven in
previous elections) make a first-round win virtually
impossible. The top two vote-getters thus advance to a
second round. To win in the second round, a candidate must
get the majority of votes from a newly-reduced (reftel)
turnout of 40% of registered voters. If the threshold of 40%
is not met, the electoral process is re-started from the
beginning (nominations of candidates) and the Speaker of the

SKOPJE 00000074 002 OF 003


Parliament serves as interim president (as he would in any
absence of the President) until such time as elections are
re-run and meet the 40% threshold.


Mayoral and Municipal Elections
--------------

6. (U) Each of Macedonia,s 84 municipal electoral
districts and the city of Skopje (an additional jurisdiction,
comprised of the 10 municipalities of Skopje) will
concurrently hold elections for municipal councils and for
mayors. The municipal council elections, like parliamentary
elections, are single-round elections with seats distributed
according to the D,Hondt formula among the lists submitted
by single parties or by coalitions of parties. Each
municipal council has a number of seats determined by law
according to population, ranging from 9 to 45, and each party
or coalition of parties provides a list of candidates equal
to the total number of available councilor seats in the
municipality.


7. (U) Mayoral races, like the presidential race, require a
minimum threshold of voters. Candidacy requires between 100
and 1000 signatures, depending on the population of the
municipality. For a mayoral candidate to win in the first
round of elections, he/she must earn 50% 1 vote of the total
voter turnout, with a required turnout of at least 1/3 of the
municipality's registered voters. Most jurisdictions will
have a minimum of three candidates, but some have as many as
eight, so first-round victories are not common. The vast
majority of municipalities will require a second round to
settle mayoral races, with the top two first-round candidates
advancing to the second round. For the second round of
mayoral races, there is no threshold for voter turnout, and
the candidate who earns the most votes is declared the winner.

Skopje is Special
--------------

8. (U) Skopje voters add another layer to the above
electoral structure by voting for president, council and
mayor of the city of Skopje as a whole in addition to voting
for the municipal council and mayor of each of the ten Skopje
municipalities. Thus voters in Skopje will be given five
ballots, and election workers will need to manage this extra
burden.

Challenges of the Combined Elections Format
--------------

9. (SBU) Combining of the presidential and
municipal/mayoral elections has raised some challenging
procedural questions. One such question is how many voter
lists will be provided for each polling station )
specifically, will voters be allowed to sign-in separately
for presidential ballots, municipal council ballots, and
mayoral ballots, thereby allowing them to vote only in the
elections that interest them, and possibly impacting turnout?
(See reftel discussion of concerns about voter turnout and
the possibility of failed elections if the 40% threshold is
not met.) A single voter list (forcing voters to take all
three ballots in most places, five in Skopje) would speed
movement through the voter check-in and boost turn-out rates
(since an invalidated ballot would still count toward a
turnout threshold),but could result in high numbers of
invalidated ballots and conflict in the polling stations, as
voters refuse to take ballots for races in which they do not
wish to cast votes. Separate voter lists for each ballot
(three in most municipalities, five in Skopje) would allow
voters a choice of which elections to participate in, but
would likely create serious logistical challenges and might
completely overwhelm many polling stations. The SEC
President recently told us that the decision on the number of
voter lists is in the hands of the Ministry of Justice, which
controls the voter register until later in 2009 when new
electoral code amendments pass responsibility for the bloated
and problematic voter list to the SEC. The SEC President
will suggest two voter lists (four for Skopje) to the MoJ
(one list for the presidential ballot and one list for both
the mayoral and municipal council ballots) as the best
solution. The most important elements of the MoJ,s decision
will be consistency of application and voter education.


Two Rounds, We Beg You
--------------

10. (SBU) Re-runs would also present serious logistical
challenges in the combined elections. If the SEC finds merit
in appeals of results in particular polling stations based on
irregularities, the SEC will invalidate votes in those
polling stations. (Note: In the June 2008 parliamentary

SKOPJE 00000074 003 OF 003


elections, the SEC properly took complaints and appeals
seriously, and invalidated voting in nearly 200 polling
stations representing more than 160,000 voters in the first
round of elections. The Supreme Court upheld the vast
majority of the invalidations. End note.) If the number of
invalidated votes is sufficient to potentially affect the
outcome of the race, the SEC calls for re-runs in those
polling stations. The question remains whether certain
elections could move to a second round while others are
re-run. While there are a few scenarios for needing re-runs
of some elections while having clear winners or second-round
contenders in others, a likely possibility would be that the
votes of particular invalidated polling stations could impact
municipal and/or mayoral results, but not impact the top-two
vote getters in the presidential race. We raised this
possibility with SEC President Novakoski last week, to
ascertain whether the second round of presidential elections
could occur while some municipalities had re-runs of the
first round of municipal and mayoral elections, a scenario he
had not yet considered. Thus, even a handful of appeals and
invalidations could slow the overall elections by several
weeks (re-runs are held two weeks after initial rounds),
especially if local re-runs halt progress in the presidential
elections. Novakoski said he would consult closely with the
ODIHR monitoring mission and seek its advice on this issue.


Enhanced &Cloning8 -- Adding Logos to the Mess
-------------- --------------

11. (SBU) Electoral code amendments have also created
another procedural dilemma for the SEC. Previously
criticized for allowing a &clone8 party intended to
confuse voters (a party with a very similar name to the
leading opposition party and nearly identical candidates,
names) to appear on ballots in both the 2008 (reftel) and
2006 parliamentary elections, the SEC faces a new potential
challenge related to &clone8 parties. Electoral code
amendments now allow independent candidates to include a
symbol or logo on the ballots. Previously, logos were
limited to officially- registered political party logos. SEC
President Novakoski recently told us there is no mechanism in
the law for the Commission to ban logos intended to confuse
voters, which are similar or even identical to those of
political parties.


12. (SBU) Comment: While these elections present procedural
challenges, our impression is that the SEC is reasonably
competent and, equally important, reasonably empowered by the
government to run free and fair elections. Novakoski is
close to the main opposition party, SDSM, yet he has not
complained to the international community of government
meddling or lack of support, except for one glaring issue: he
claims the Ministry of Interior has not consulted him about
security matters. This is critical, and we will seek to
correct it. End comment.

REEKER