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DE RUEHSQ #0074/01 0490824
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P 180824Z FEB 09
FM AMEMBASSY SKOPJE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8051
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY 0487

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