The head of the main board of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) announced on Sunday his party will initiate changes in the country’s Election Law so scanners are introduced in the election process which he said was ridden with irregularities.

“When we said beginning of this year that the main regime parties are preparing a huge election fraud and when we initiated in the parliament a proposal for changes of the Election law which would introduce the scanning of ballots in determining the election results, a number of lawmakers from the ruling parties and some media loyal to them have tried to label that populism,” said Sasa Magazinovic.

He reminded that the party also requested video surveillance on polling stations as well as a rigorous voter identification procedure.

“We clearly said that counting ballots manually combined with the dubious credibility and expertise of the people participating in the process is opening the door for a variety of manipulations and fraud which question the will of the people and the fairness of the election in general,” he said.

Following this election, which he called “everything but fair and honest,” Magazinovic said “it is clear why so much effort was invested into blocking those changes in the upper house of the Parliament after they were already adopted by the lower house.”

He said his party will insist on these changes before the local election in two years, and that the winners of the general election on October 7 were “decided by the counters and not by voters.”

These changes to the Election law will be among the first to be proposed again, he said, adding that this proposal will be followed by another one introducing harsher punishments for election fraud, “which was was visible in these elections, including identity theft, threats, purchasing votes, producing irregular ballots, wrong counting and other violations of the election process,” he said.