Parties greet with reservations the CEC proposal to extend electronic voting in 2027

By Blerina Gjoka

In an open letter on Friday, State Election Commissioner Ilirjan Celibashi asked the political parties to state their position on the possibility of extending electronic voting and counting to 3 or 4 large municipalities in the local elections of 2027.

The Commissioner argues that extending the technology to a limited number of municipalities would be a reasonable approach, taking into account the technical, logistical and administrative aspects, while asking the parties to have a clear position before the start of the electoral process.

According to Celibashi, a CEC decision to expand electronic voting should be based on a consolidated political position, so that its implementation is sustainable and in time for next year’s local elections.

But the proposal, which is expected to be discussed on Friday at a consultative meeting between the parties and the CEC, has been greeted in advance with reservations by the opposition parties, while the ruling Socialist Party says it supports in principle the expansion of the use of technology.

The head of the socialist parliamentary group, Taulant Balla, told BIRN that this political force “has supported and will always support any proposal that brings the use of technology in electoral processes”.

“Technology, accompanied by clear guarantees and standards, can contribute to increasing the accuracy, efficiency and reliability of the electoral process,” he added.

Unlike the SP, the Democratic Party, as the largest opposition party, shows scepticism about the proposal, although it does not have an openly opposing position to it.

The DP’s deputy chair, Belind Këlliçi, told BIRN that the party does not yet have a final political position on the CEC proposal and that the consultation with the CEC is awaited in order to take a position.

But referring to the opposing stance in the voting process of the last parliamentary elections, Këlliçi added that “before proposing the expansion of the use of electronic voting, the CEC must address the problems identified during previous processes with this system”.

The DP opposed in 2025 the expansion of electronic voting, demanding transparency and investigation into the problems found in the 2023 local elections in Elbasan, Kamëz and Vorë.

According to the DP, some of the concerns are related to interventions by technical operators in the process and to cases where, according to it, the operators voted on behalf of voters who were not present.

For the democrats, the expansion of the system must be preceded by full transparency about the problems of previous processes and by clarification of responsibilities for the alleged violations.

The Lëvizja Bashkë movement, a new parliamentary party, also says it agrees in principle with the use of electronic voting, but demands technical guarantees that the use of this voting will guarantee the security and verifiability of the process.

This party’s representative for electoral issues, Oltion Fociro, said the main problem is not related to the principle of electronic voting itself, but to the way the technological infrastructure that supports it is administered.

“We demand that there be protocol guarantees for the servers where the systems will be hosted, and we oppose the use of AKSHI servers, since these servers do not meet the necessary security standards and certifications.”

“It depends on who controls the system,” Fociro said, arguing that full control of the technical infrastructure by a single institution creates problems for the credibility of the process.

Another request of Lëvizja Bashkë is that its representatives have direct access to the server logs, so that they can verify who entered the system, when the access occurred and what actions were performed.

Representatives of the Freedom Party and the Mundësia Party said they did not yet have a position on the CEC proposal.

Electronic voting in Albania was first used as a pilot in the parliamentary elections of April 2021, in 32 polling stations in Administrative Unit no. 10 in Tirana, while in the partial elections of 6 March 2022 it was extended to the whole Municipality of Vorë.

In the 2023 local elections, the system was expanded to 401 polling stations in Elbasan, Kamëz and Vorë, including over 300,000 voters, but it was accompanied by technical problems and delays in producing the results.