OSCE Presence and Albanian Interior Ministry organize meeting on voter list reform

TIRANA, 1 February 2006 - Reform of voter list compilation was the focus of a roundtable organized by the OSCE Presence in Albania and the Albanian Interior Ministry.

Participants found that a decentralized model of preparing voter lists, used for the first time in the July parliamentary election, was workable, but that more improvement was needed.

"The work that we are launching today aims at assisting the local government units to further verify and clean up the voter lists from duplicate entries or inaccurate records. It is up to the ad hoc parliamentary Committee to take the lead of the electoral reform, but, however, we should do our part to address the concerns raised in the OSCE/ODIHR report on the last parliamentary elections," Albanian Interior Minister Sokol Olldashi said.

" It is clear that one of the ultimate determinants of the reliability of voter lists is the accuracy of the Albanian voter registry as such. As the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights noted in its final report on the 2005 elections, work on improving the accuracy of civil registries in Albania is pivotal and has to be a long-term effort," said Ambassador Pavel Vacek, the Head of the OSCE Presence in Albania.

Representatives from the Interior Ministry, the Central Election Commission, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and different political parties took part in the meeting.

Participants said that despite problems such as unclear roles for different authorities, the voter lists used in the 2005 elections were a good basis for further progress ahead of local elections. They also supported the government's commitment to reforming and modernizing the civil registry and address system.