Meeting on passive voter registration

Senior Deputy High Representative Ambassador Peter Bas-Backer, today, will participate in a meeting which aims to raise awareness of competent authorities in BiH of the need for steps to be taken which will prepare the way for the introduction of Passive Voter Registration at the October elections.

The meeting, organized by the Central Election Commission and the CIPS Directorate, will point out that the level of engagement of the local authorities varies from one municipality to the other and will call on those which have serious issues to resolve to take action to prepare for PVR as an urgent priority matter.

PVR is a technically complex undertaking. It requires close coordination between different State, Entity, Canton and Municipal bodies. A failure to meet the requirements at any level of the administration may seriously jeopardize the success of the new System.

The CEC and CIPS Directorate have outlined that there are two main problems that exist with information being provided by the municipalities:

Updating street names – the CIPS needs to be able to match each street with an existing street code. Municipalities need to act on this immediately.

They need to urgently review the street names and decide the official street/settlement names, which should immediately reported to the MoI and then to the CIPS Directorate.

26 municipalities find themselves in this situation.

Updating personal information – Municipalities must urgently transfer information on, for example, marriages and deaths to CIPS.

PVR will make voters’ participation in elections easier allowing the automatic registration of all potential voters in BiH, The system will still allow for those wishing to vote in their pre-war municipality to register to do so.

Late Budgets

City of Mostar and municipality Prozor-Rama are the only units of local self-government in the area of the OHR South responsibility that have not adopted budgets for 2006.  We encourage the elected officials in both places to fulfill their basic responsibilities in this regard.