Subject: Kosovo vote to be conducted under complex PR system
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 20:20:09 PDT
From: C-afp@... (AFP)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Oct 28 (AFP) - Kosovo's UN administration has chosen
a complex open-list system of proportional representation for the province's
first post war municipal election Saturday.
Each voter will first of all choose which party to back, and then he or she
will also have the option of selecting a specific candidate from within this
list.
The personal choices will be used after the vote to arrange the candidates
on each party list in order of voter preference, and the eventual number of
candidates awarded council seats decided on the proportion their party wins of
the total vote.
The relative complexity of the voting system will delay the final result.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which
organised the poll for Kosovo's UN mission, has said that it may be up to 12
days before final results are released.
An indication of turnout and voting tendencies may be available late
Sunday, however, and partial results follow early next week, officials said.
The OSCE said the open list system was chosen to "encourage the candidates
themselves to make a more direct, personal appeal to the voters."
At least 30 percent of the candidates among the first 15 names on each list
are women, following a UN decision to enforce a quota on the parties.
Some 901,000 Kosovars, the vast majority from the province's ethnic
Albanian majority, have registered to vote on Saturday. The province's Serb
minority largely boycotted the registration process.