Today (June 7) Kosovo votes for the 11th legislature of the Assembly. The Central Election Commission has distributed the materials, including the ballots for the 38 municipalities. There are 23 political parties and three coalitions with a total of 917 candidates competing for the 120 seats of the legislative body, where 20 of them are guaranteed for minority communities.
Voting started at 07:00 in the morning, officially closes at 19:00. The process then continues with the counting of votes and the first results are expected to be announced within a few hours. More than 2 million citizens have the right to vote, including about 130,000 citizens who voted from outside Kosovo through the mail or directly at diplomatic missions, a process that ended the day before.
Voting within the country takes place in 949 centers with 2550 polling stations, 911 of which are for the regular process and 38 centers, one for each municipality, take place conditional voting. The CEC has engaged around 300 members with 72 mobile teams to enable the voting of persons with special needs who cannot vote in the respective centers.
The police force and over 100 prosecutors are on the ground to guarantee the smooth running of the electoral process. Today’s parliamentary elections are the third in a row within 16 months, after those of February 9 and December 28 held last year, and come after the failure of the Assembly to elect a new president, after the end of Vjosa Osman’s mandate.
While Kosovo has entered a new electoral test, analysts say that without a consensus between the parties, the country will continue to face political deadlock.
