The BiH Central Election Commission banned from publishing excerpt from the Central Voters’ Register for voting outside BiH
On October 9, 2020 the BiH Central Election Commission received the Decision of the BiH Personal Data Protection Agency banning the BiH CEC from publishing on its website www.izbori.ba personal information of the voters registered in the Excerpt from the CVR for voting outside BiH, and ordering removal of the information from the website.
The BiH Central Election Commission did not publish personal information of the voters registered in the excerpt from the CVR for voting outside BIH, but it published excerpt from the CVR for OCV voters aimed at ensuring accuracy, correctness and overall integrity of the Central Voters’ Register.
In line with Article 3.1, paragraph (2) and (3) of the BiH Election Law, the Central Voters’ Register and excerpt from the CVR are public, and the right to view the CVR is exercised in line with the BiH Election Law.
We would like to remind that in the period from 18.07 to 17.08.2020 interim voters’ registers for voting in BiH were publicly displayed aimed at ensuring accuracy of the Central Voters’ Register. The CVR was published by the municipal/city election commission on the websites and bulletin boards of municipality/city, and in other appropriate ways, all in line with Article 18 of the Rulebook on the use and preparation of the excerpt from the Central Voters’ Register. The voters’ registers published then did not contain any less voter information.
The primary tool for achieving accuracy of the Central Voters’ Register is enabling the public to scrutinize the CVR and excerpts from the CVR, which is prescribed by Article 3.11 of the BiH Election Law: “Central Voters’ Register data shall be published and its contents made available to the public taking into account the principles of protection of personal information, pursuant to the Law on Protection of Personal Information.”
Although the aforementioned decision disables the BiH CEC of performing statutory competences, which entails securing accuracy, correctness and overall integrity of the CVR, the BiH CEC has to act in line with the decision and the excerpt from CVR for voting outside BIH has been removed form the official website of the BIH CEC.
We hereby inform the public that we will seek judicial protection in this case aimed at protecting our statutory competences of security accuracy, correctness and overall integrity of the CVR, and aimed at preventing all abuses in the electoral process.
