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The two main Albanian political parties, the ruling Socialist Party and the opposition Democratic Party, seem to have agreed in closed-door talks to allow remote voting by Albanian citizens residing outside Albania, but the modalities of gaining the right to remote voting are such as to make it difficult for immigrants to actually vote.
The document agreed between the parties, leaked to the media, shows that, unlike resident citizens, who in the Albanian legal system have always enjoyed the right to vote by virtue of being citizens, immigrants, if they want to vote remote vote and not appearing in person in Albania, they will have to make a separate registration in a separate register, where the registration will be valid only for one election party.
"The voter who is outside the territory of the Republic of Albania and who wants to exercise the right to vote for the next elections for the Assembly must be registered in the list of voters abroad," says the proposed draft law on which the parties have agreed at the level experts while discussions at the political level continue.
"The list of voters who vote from outside the territory of the Republic of Albania is drawn up and used anew for each pair of elections," it is written further.
Immigrants who decide to exercise their right to vote in this way indirectly pay automatic disenrollment and loss of voting rights as resident citizens. The draft law seems to have left out the need to return these citizens to the resident voter register after the election, if they ever decide to return to their homeland.
"Albanian citizens who are registered in the list of voters abroad, after the completion of the registration procedure according to this article, are de-registered from the list of voters in the country," the draft law reads.
The right of immigrants to vote despite not being present in their homeland on voting day has been widely debated over the past decade, while a Constitutional Court ruling has asked parliament to take measures to enable this right. The procedures set by the parties seem to put Albanians living abroad at a disadvantage by forcing them to register with a request to gain the right to vote, unlike the country's historical legal system, in which the right to vote comes automatically without require prior registration.
However, the political parties have given themselves the right to further intervene in the process with other possible restrictions, during the examination in the so-called "regulatory institution".
"The detailed list of documentation required for the registration of voters who vote outside the territory of the Republic of Albania is determined by the decision of the Regulator," the proposal reads.
"Regulator" is an institution of the Central Election Commission that consists of members voted by the Assembly of Albania according to the preferences of the political parties. This institution is the one that will have the right to draw up the "detailed list of documentation". The criteria for drawing up said list of documentation will likely determine how easy or how difficult it will be for the non-resident population to vote.
Discrimination of non-resident citizens versus resident citizens, requiring the former to register with a request to participate in elections is likely to be an issue for further discussion.
Currently, almost half of the population of 4.6 million citizens seems to live in emigration. Immigrants have the right to vote, but to exercise it, until today they would have to travel to their place of residence on election day, which most do not do.
Remote voting, a practice known in many countries around the world, has been discussed as an option to democratize the country, under the assumption that immigrants are not under the pressure of political parties, mainly the ruling party, as resident residents are. . But many raise questions whether or not a citizen who has been living in emigration for years is reasonable to vote to elect the government of the country where he does not live, but which will govern the citizens who live in this country.
In the event that the immigrant vote will become a reality according to the current proposal, it remains to be seen how interested the immigrants will be, or how easy the CEC and the Regulator will make the process for them to vote, and what the consequences will be. to have in the election results and in the governance of the country. / BIRN
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