Bosnia Votes: 3.4M Voters, 518 Posts, Biometric ID Debuts
Polling stations opened at 7 am local time (0500GMT) and will close at 7 pm, the Central Election Commission (CIK) said. The vote is held every four years.
Who is on the ballot
Voters will pick the Bosniak, Croat and Serb members of the country's three-member presidency and the state-level Parliamentary Assembly. They will also choose lawmakers for the House of Representatives of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the country's two entities. The other is Republika Srpska, whose National Assembly is also up for election.
Ballots further cover the president and vice presidents of Republika Srpska and the members of the 10 cantonal assemblies in the Federation.
The CIK approved 75 political parties, 29 coalitions and four independent candidates, with more than 7,000 candidacies registered across all levels of government.
Ten candidates, three presidency seats
Ten candidates are competing for the presidency. Voters in the Federation choose between a Bosniak and a Croat member, while voters in Republika Srpska elect the Serb member.
The Bosniak seat is being contested by incumbent Denis Becirovic, Bakir Izetbegovic, Semir Efendic and Fahrudin Radoncic. For the Croat seat, Darijana Filipovic, Zdenko Lucic and Slaven Kovacevic are in the race. The Serb seat is being sought by incumbent Zeljka Cvijanovic, Marinko Bozovic and Nebojsa Vukanovic.
Twelve candidates are also running for the presidency of Republika Srpska.
New technology makes its nationwide debut
The election is the first in which new voting technology is used nationwide to identify voters, count ballots and transmit results. Biometric voter verification, ballot scanners and video surveillance are in place at about 4,500 polling locations.
Voters will have their identities checked and then undergo fingerprint verification. Voting itself remains on paper ballots, which are scanned before going into the ballot boxes.
Scanned data goes directly to the CIK, which means preliminary, incomplete results could be announced around 8 pm, earlier than in past elections. Ballots will also be counted by hand.
The commission has said it will run additional checks if scanned and manual tallies differ significantly. If the gap persists, the manual count will be accepted as the official result.
Diaspora vote
Bosnians abroad are also voting. Some 48,078 registered to vote by mail, one of the lowest diaspora registration figures in recent election cycles. Voting is also taking place at 20 Bosnian diplomatic and consular missions in 13 countries: Germany, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, the US, Qatar and Jordan.
The electoral roll is slightly larger than in the 2022 general elections, when 3.37 million people were registered. In that vote, Becirovic won the Bosniak seat on the presidency, Zeljko Komsic the Croat seat and Cvijanovic the Serb seat.
Dayton framework
The country's complex political system stems from the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the 1992-1995 war. It consists of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and the self-governing Brcko District.
Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in 1992. Its first postwar elections took place in September 1996.
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