Albania

Albania's 2003 Local Elections: A Spotlight on Homebound, Hospitalized, and Disabled Voters

By Jerry Mindes

Due to a change in the election code, the Albanian election commission no longer uses a mobile ballot box, an election practice standard in many nations where election workers visit a voter’s home on Election Day, allowing homebound elderly or disabled voters a chance to cast their ballot. The practice was discontinued several years ago due to concerns of fraud. No other mechanism was put into place, however, to enfranchise citizens who are unable to leave their homes to vote.

Since 2002, the Albanian Disability Rights Foundation (ADRF) has been involved in efforts to get its Parliament to address the rights of homebound voters, and to advocate for the rights of voters with all types of physical, mental, or sensory disabilities.

On October 13, 2003, the day after local elections, the ADRF surveyed school children in five middle schools in the capital city of Tirana. The eighth graders – representing 647 households – were asked if any members of their household were unable to vote in the previous day’s election because of a mobility problem, whether it was due to old age, blindness, or a short- or long-term physical disability.

A total of 11.3 percent of the teenagers reported that at least one person in their household was not able to vote because of a short or long term physical limitation.

That means that in one out of every nine households in five Tirana neighborhoods, at least one individual - a grandparent, a parent, a brother or a sister – was unable to vote, all because of a decision by lawmakers to discontinue the use of the mobile ballot box.

The ADRF survey results reveal that the elderly and people with short-term disabilities made up the largest segments of those who could not vote.

This is the first known effort, in any nation, to try to quantify the number of voters who require home-based voting. The effort is important because the use of mobile ballot boxes is often criticized as opening the door to fraud. In at least two nations – Albania and Armenia – these concerns have led to changes in election law to prevent the use of mobile ballot boxes, leaving disenfranchised those who are physically unable to go in person to the public polling station. International organizations which set standards for free and fair elections have also used the rationale of “fraud” to discourage home-based voting.

Through the pilot survey in Albania, the ADRF and the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) are working to re-open a dialogue with the Central Election Commission, with political parties, and with Members of Parliament, on the rights of all voters – even those who are homebound – to cast a ballot. ADRF and IFES are proposing to conduct further research to strengthen the argument that the voting rights of homebound citizens are being neglected.

A Different Way to Monitor Elections

Through its efforts this autumn, the Albanian disability group demonstrated that election monitoring is not only about observing those who participate on Election Day: the voters, the candidates, the political parties, the elections workers, and the media. Sometimes, election monitoring is about observing those who do not get to vote, and trying to figure out why.

With a grant from the International Foundation for Elections Systems (IFES), as part of a global initiative funded by the Swedish government, the ADRF organized several activities to highlight what is normally not noticed during an election: that election processes and election monitors rarely take into account the voting needs of citizens with disabilities, or the voting needs of citizens who are elderly who have difficulty leaving home.

The denial of election rights to homebound voters is but one focus of the ADRF. Through public education, and election monitoring by disabled citizens, the ADRF also put a spotlight on the need to improve existing Albanian election law provisions as they relate to the accessibility of polling stations, the right of blind citizens to vote in secret, and the rights of citizens who are hospitalized to fully participate in the electoral process. The election monitoring effort by ADRF and IFES also looked at the administration of the provision in election law allowing prisoners an opportunity to vote.

Public Education. “Even My Vote Brings a Change:” Prior to the elections, the Albanian disability group worked to educate the general public about the rights of voters with disabilities, and about the difficulties they face in exercising their rights. Part of the public education effort was a poster (pictured at left) distributed by ADRF to hundreds of sites in the cities of Tirana, Elbasan, and Librazdh. The slogan on the poster states that “even my vote brings a change.”

ADRF was also successful in generating newspaper, radio, and television coverage of its election monitoring efforts in the weeks leading up to the elections, including:

• A news program produced by the Voice of America, aired on Albanian television during the week leading up to the Elections, featuring representatives of ADRF and IFES;
• A special TV program broadcast in Elbasan dealing with disability issues;
• An Election Day special news item featuring Ms. Drita Hajdari, a young woman with a disability who served as an election monitor in Tirana; and
• A series of articles on Election Day in the newspaper Korrieri, featuring ADRF observers, including two deaf observers, as well as an interview with a representative from IFES.

Election Monitoring:
On October 12, 2003, Election Day in Albania, seventy-five (75) citizens with disabilities spent the day as fully-accredited and trained Election Observers. They worked in the cities of Tirana, Elbasan, and Librazdh, monitoring whether elections were conducted according to Albanian law and international standards, paying particular attention to the degree to which polling stations were accessible to people with physical disabilities, and the experiences of disabled voters. The election monitors were trained by representatives of the ADRF, which worked in close collaboration with the Society for Democratic Culture, Albania’s major domestic election monitoring organization.

ADRF also participated in a post-election press conference of domestic monitoring agencies, which was covered widely by print and television media. ADRF advocacy director, Ms. Bardyhylka Kospiri, provided an overview of ADRF findings and concerns, and was joined by representatives of the Helsinki Commission of Albania, the Society for Democratic Culture, and the Albanian Human Rights Commission.

At the October 13 press briefing at Tirana’s Sheraton Hotel, Ms. Kospriri (at the right) cited three areas where the election code was not followed: nearly all voting stations were inaccessible to voters with disabilities; a lack of communication between election and hospital authorities resulting in the disenfranchisement of most hospital patients; and blind voters were not given the opportunity to vote in secret. Ms. Kospiri also noted that homebound voters were disenfranchised, and that voting list errors – which were widespread -- created added problems for disabled voters, as they were less likely to travel to the local election office to challenge or correct the mistakes.

Hospital Voting:
Albanian election law requires the election commission to provide hospitalized citizens an opportunity to vote. Unfortunately, the procedures in place were often not adhered to, resulting in the disenfranchisement of a significant percentage of those eligible to vote. At Mother Teresa Hospital in Tirana, for example, hospital administrators provided the local election commission with a list of about 200 eligible voters who were hospitalized. The list was rejected by the election commission because it was hand-written and did not provide adequate information to identify the voter. Hospital and election authorities blamed each other for the obvious lapse in communication.

Prison Voting:
Elections at Prison Number 313, a high security facility one street from the main train station in Tirana, were orderly and without the rancor from political party operatives that characterized so many other polling stations. A total of 230 prisoners were registered to vote, and all but 13 showed up to cast their ballot on Election Day. Prisoners were brought to the polling area in groups of 10 to 15. They were escorted into a waiting room, which had voter education posters on the walls. Three to four of these prisoners were brought to a second room down the hall, which was set up for voting. There, a full seven-person voting commission processed the voters, checking their identification, marking their thumb with invisible ink, and providing ballots which the prisoners would take behind the voting screens: all standard procedures. The prisoners voted only in city-wide races, as no district-level ballots were made available. The right of prisoners to vote in secret was respected. The IFES and ADRF observers who visited the prison were allowed full access to the two voting rooms, and to the prisoners. The observers did not signal in advance what prison they would visit, or at what time they would visit. Prison officials allowed full access to the observers, without hesitation.

What Next?
Over the coming weeks, the ADRF will seek the collaboration of the Central Election Commission to discuss how to improve the administration of current election law, and to identify areas which may require further election law reform. The current election law, if fully implemented, should allow for significant improvement in the selection of accessible voting stations; in providing blind voters the right to vote in secret; and in ensuring that hospital patients have the right to vote. The current election law will need to be modified if homebound voters are to be enfranchised. The CEC, under the leadership of Ilirjan Celibashi, has been responsive to the disability community, and accessible in listening to, and acting upon, its concerns. With continued collaboration among IFES, ADRF, and the CEC, this positive trend should continue, and as a result, the voice and vote of disabled citizens of Albania will be more present during future Albanian elections. These efforts, should they be successful, will serve as a model for the election commissions of the emerging nations of Central and Eastern Europe.

For information about IFES’ Disability Program, Contact:
Jerry Mindes, Senior Advisor for Human Rights, IFES
202-828-8507; jimindes@ifes.org

For information about IFES’ Program in Albania, Contact:
Lisa Blonder, Program Officer, IFES
202-828-8507: lblonder@ifes.org