Electoral boards are the most important but also the weakest link of the electoral process in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to a former member of that body monitoring elections at the local level, frauds are the most frequent in the boards where a political party besides its own members recruits its supporters as well.

N1's source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the vote rigging also happens if two political parties reach a deal and they do each other a favour at two different polling stations.

According to the source, some voters would come to a polling station and show their IDs “pro forma” but would actually sign the list of voters for someone else whom the electoral board member in charge points at.

“They usually come in a group of five to ten at once, to make a crowd and make it unnoticed. They are organised,” said N1's source explaining that these voters usually take two ballots to fill in.

“The ballots already prepared for two persons are given to one person. During the previous 2014 election, they were bringing in huge metal ballot boxes and there was already 300 filled in ballots,” he added.

Declaring the opponents’ ballots null and void is another sort of fraud often seen at polling stations, according to the same source. One of the ways to do that was scribbling the ballots with ink during the vote count process.

“Can you guess how much the parties are harmed in that way, when those ballots are counted at the polling station, and when municipal election commission does something similar to that. The Central Election Commission doesn't accept complaints, because all they see is a scribbled ballot, they immediately say it is an invalid ballot,” said the source, who used to work as an electoral board member for several election cycles.

This year, according to him, there is a huge pressure on voters who are asked to make a cell phone photo of their ballot and ID.

Smaller settlements are more exposed to this kind of control, said N1's collocutor adding that they are usually instructed to come for the voting at the specifically defined time of the day so that their votes are easily controlled.

Election observers only observe, he said emphasizing that electoral board chairman can ask them to leave the room if they make objections.

N1's source said the police never intervened at the polling stations he worked at nor anyone was ever called to account for breaching the election process.