Observing Albania's Elections, May 2011

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Election observation is the major responsibility of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an international organization whose membership includes all European states, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Canada, and the United States. While all OSCE members may have their elections monitored by ODIHR (unfortunately pronounced "oh, dear"), this service is particularly important to the new democracies of eastern Europe and central Asia, where underdeveloped electoral systems may result in results that do not accurately reflect the popular will, either through inaccurate vote tallying or, sometimes, outright fraud. ODIHR's well developed monitoring system relies on volunteers from OSCE member countries--long-term observers (LTOs) for the election campaign and short-term observers (STOs) for the the voting and vote counting--plus a professional staff to coordinate the entire process and issue interim reports and a final report that judges the election's conformity with OSCE norms. The final report typically contains recommendations for improvement of the process in future elections.

We had served as STOs in two elections in Moldova, where Todd had been assigned as ambassador, and one election in Ukraine, which we had visited several times before. Interested in a totally new experience, we were delighted to receive an invitation from the State Department's contractor to observe the local elections in Albania, a country we had never visited. Accepting with enthusiasm, we left on May 3 with other American observers for an eight-day stint starting with a day-long briefing in Tirana for all 250-odd STOs. Then we departed for our observation areas, Georgia to Cerrik in a picturesque mountain valley south of the capital and Todd to Lac, an undistinguished small city north of Tirana not far from the coast. Georgia was paired with a Swiss journalist, while Todd's partner was a retired municipal official from Sweden.


Lake near Cerrik



Goatherd near Cerrik

We discovered that Albania (pop: ca. 3 million) is a beautiful country with a mild climate, inviting beaches along the Adriatic, impressive mountains that rise quickly from the coastal plain, and an attractive capital with some broad boulevards. The Albanian language, while Indo-European, is not closely related to any other European tongue--disconcertingly for us, Albanians express agreement by shaking their heads from side to side. Two millennia ago the Romans conquered the coastal plain but left the Albanian mountain tribes to their own devices. With the end of the empire the region was evangelized by missionaries from both Italy and the Byzantine Empire. However, after the Ottomans conquered the region in the 15th Century, despite the heroic resistance raised by Skanderbeg, the national hero, most Albanians embraced Islam so that today the country is thought to be 70 percent Muslim, 20 percent Eastern Orthodox, and 10 percent Roman Catholic. However, the Islam of Albania is far less rigid than that, say, in Saudi Arabia or Iran.


Skanderbeg Square in Tirana with Neighboring Mosque and Church

Following World War II, the communist resistance leader Enver Hoxha seized contol of Albania and began a rule that was the most Stalinist in eastern Europe. Somewhat like Harry Potter characters who call Voldemort "he who shall not be named," Georgia's interpreter, just in her 20's, referred to Hoxha only as "the dictator." Having broken with both Tito and Khrushchev as "revisionists," Hoxha allied Albania with China, which furnished the country with substantial amounts of aid that was spent in large part on military preparedness. The country is still dotted with concrete bunkers from which the citizenry were to fire on whatever invaders should cross the Albanian frontier. When communist rule petered out around 1990, the country was said to have enough arms to fight not only World War III, but World Wars IV and V as well.


Bunker from Hoxha Era

Two major political parties have emerged since the end of the Cold War: the Socialists and the Democrats. The difference between the two, and between the coalitions formed with their supporting parties, is less ideological than tribal. The country is so party-dominated that there seem to be no significant non-partisan groups to act as impartial arbiters.

Control of the electoral machinery is divided between the two parties, which name almost equal number of representatives to each electoral body. However, as these bodies have an odd number of members, majority control rests with one party or the other. While majority control of the voting stations is split evenly between the Socialists and the Democrats, the Democrat coalition, which holds the majority in the national parliament, has majority control of the commissions in the ballot counting centers and the Central Election Commission. Not surprisingly, partisanship colors every important decision regarding the conduct of an election.


Democrat Supporter Flies His Party's Colors

One thing that the Socialists and the Democrats both support is Albania's entry into the European Union with all its attendant benefits, financial and otherwise. However, an important requirement on the path to EU membership is the conduct of free and fair elections. Thus, in approaching their participation in the electoral machinery, the two parties are conflicted by a desire for victory and a wish to have the election judged proper by international observers, principally the ODIHR mission.

We reached our observation areas two days before the election and had the chance to do a bit of sightseeing. Todd's region offered little of interest, but Georgia's included the city of Elbasan, the site of a castle that figured prominently in Skanderbeg's battles with the Ottomans. There she and her partner paid a visit to St. Mary's Orthodox Church within the castle walls.


Cafe at Elbasan Castle


With Priest at St. Mary's

The day before the election our drivers took us with our partners and interpreters to locate the voting centers where we would observe the balloting. This proved more challenging that we had anticipated since our maps were well out of date and possibly inaccurate when originally published.

Election day began for us at 6:20, when we arrived at our first voting centers to observe the sealing of the ballot boxes and other procedures mandated to prevent fraud before the first votes were cast. As these were local elections, voters chose between two candidates for mayor of their city or rural commune, each nominated by the Democrat or Socialist coalition, and then selected one party out of some 20 to represent them in their municipal or communal council. The candidate receiving a majority of the votes cast was elected mayor, but council seats were divided among the parties' candidates based on the percentage of votes each party received. In the council elections, however, most parties were grouped in coalitions headed by either the Socialists or the Democrats.

After the polls opened, supposedly at 7:00 but actually later, we observed the balloting at our first voting stations, checking to see whether all the required procedures were being followed and then completing a detailed report form on the center's performance. Then we drove to 10-12 other stations to observe the voting there, completing a report form for each and and faxing the forms at intervals to ODIHR headquarters in Tirana so that the professional staff could see the election unfolding in almost real time. Before the polls closed at 7:00 p.m., we arrived at our final voting centers to watch the center commissions seal the two ballot boxes, one for the mayor election and one for the council election, and take other prescribed steps to prevent ballot tampering. The seven commission members then placed the ballot boxes in a van, climbed in with them, and drove with a policeman to the area ballot counting centers with our cars following behind.

Albania elections are very unusual, but not quite unique, in that ballots are not tallied in the voting centers but in regional ballot counting centers. There the boxes from 60-odd voting centers will be processed by several teams of four persons, two nominated by the Socialist coalition and two by the Democrat coalition. This system was instituted several elections back after parties complained of fraud in ballot counting at the voting centers. Thus, the second half of our job as observers was to monitor the lengthy procedures at our regional ballot counting stations. Fortunately, our teams were paired with another team at each station so that we were only scheduled to work 12-hour shifts.


Georgia and Interpreter at Cerrik Ballot Counting Center with Ballot Boxes

The Albanian electoral code calls for the completion of ballot counting by 5:00 p.m. the day after election day. As the ODIHR mission recognized, this deadline is totally unrealistic given the complexity of the procedures to be followed. The ballot counting cannot begin until all ballot boxes have been formally received by the seven-member commission at the ballot counting center, and the reception procedures are time consuming in themselves. At Todd's center, for example, the last ballot boxes were received around 3:00 a.m., and the start of vote count was delayed until almost noon that day to allow some members of the ballot counting teams to present proof that they were university graduates as required by the electoral legislation.

Once the ballot counting began, we were able to move among the counting tables, observe the operations at each, and complete detailed questionnaires on the process, which called for a detailed reconciliation of the material received from the voting center before the actual counting began. Party observers were separated from the tables, but each ballot was placed under a camera that magnified the ballot's image on a screen so that observers would supposedly be able to judge its validity and call out a challenge if they disagreed with the table's decision. These challenges seemed to grow in proportion to the expected closeness of a given election.


Ballot Counting at Cerrik

Our shifts ended at midnight on Tuesday, the second full day after the election, but less than half the ballots at our stations had been counted at that point. On Wednesday we drove back to Tirana for a debriefing session with the headquarters team, enjoyed a farewell reception with some good Albanian wine, and caught a couple hours sleep before our bus left for the airport at 3:15 a.m. on Thursday. As the ballot counting was continuing, we were offered the opportunity to stay on until Monday to observe counting operations in Tirana, where the hotly contested mayor's race was the most important election in the country. We declined, however, citing commitments at home. Somehow we were reminded of the contest where first prize was one week in Philadelphia and second prize was two weeks in Philadelphia.

This post does not contain an evaluation of the election operations we observed, for ODIHR quite rightly believes that individual observations may not be representative. However, the ODIHR team has published two interim reports, available at www.osce.org/odihr/elections, and will post a final report some weeks after the election is over.