Ministry of Interior should publish data on migration of voters that it submitted to Prime Minister
The claim of the Prime Minister in the technical mandate, according to which "everyone can check" in how many cases citizens change their residence, not only does not correspond to the factual situation but is directly opposite to the official answer that Transparency Serbia received from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In an interview on TV Prva, reacting to the N1's broadcasted feature about the possible organised fictitious relocation of residents of Mala Krsna to the Belgrade municipality of Voždovac, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić said that she checked and thus determined how many people from Mala Krsna were registered to vote in elections in Belgrade, and that anyone can check it.
"I checked right away, and anyone can check; it's not something I can do as Prime Minister. Overall, in the last 72 hours from Mala Krsna, one person was registered to vote in Belgrade", she said ((her statement is available at 32:48 min, on the recording published on the YouTube channel od TV Prva:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b74D1WPrAOU)
Regarding the most controversial issue of the December 2023 elections - voter migration - Transparency Serbia proposed to the Ministry of the Interior to publish anonymised data not only on the situation (current number of citizens residing in a particular municipality) but also on the movement of citizens' residence (municipality of previous and new residence and dates of application). Ministry of Interior in the answer of 8 February 2024. claims that "the available records ... cannot be searched according to the specified criteria".
The voter list is automatically updated based on changes in citizens' residence records maintained by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This means that the Prime Minister had access to information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is not available to all citizens. Although the Prime Minister's statement is clearly untrue in relation to public access to voter migration data, it is very significant, as it proves that it is possible, through the records, to track not only how many citizens have a registered residence at a certain address or in a certain municipality, but also where was their previously registered residence. In other words, this is just what the MUP denied in response to the request and initiative of Transparency Serbia.
Bearing all this in mind, TS points out that a prerequisite for establishing the facts about the extent of the organised relocation of voters before the December 2023 elections, as well as for seeking a solution to that problem before the upcoming spring local elections, is for the Ministry of Interior to publish anonymised records on the movement of residence of adult citizens. It would be an important step to fulfil the fourth ODIHR recommendation from the final report for the December elections, which refers to "removing doubts and raising confidence in the correctness of voter registration".
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