Bosnia to acquire electronic voting equipment to ensure "free and fair elections"

At a meeting in Sarajevo, the CEC announced a tender for equipment worth over €45 million, to be delivered gradually over the next four years.

The tender covers systems for biometric voter identification and scanning of ballots once they are completed, equipping around 6,000 polling stations typically opened during elections in the country.

Some of the equipment was already tested during the local elections in October 2024. Electronic identity checks using fingerprint recognition were carried out at 458 polling stations, while optical scanners automatically counted votes at 145 stations, significantly speeding up the announcement of results. Video monitoring was also installed.

Results were available to the SIP within 10 minutes of polling station closure.

"This is currently the greatest achievement of new technologies for us," said then-CEC president Irena Hadziabdic. The independent NGO "Pod lupom" (Under the Lens), which monitors elections in BiH, described the trial as "highly successful".

Following the tests, the CEC pushed to procure the necessary equipment for all future polling stations but faced political obstacles. By October, the BiH Parliament had not adopted the 2025 budget that would have allocated part of the funds for the purchase.

To ensure that the general elections planned for October 2026 are not held using the existing systems, which have raised doubts about the integrity of the electoral process, the international community's High Representative in the country, Christian Schmidt, intervened. In July, he allocated slightly over €55 million to the SIP from the profits of the BiH Central Bank.

This will enable "free and fair elections" and meet the requirements of the EU and the OSCE, Schmidt said, warning that citizens of BiH have waited too long for such elections and must no longer be denied them.