The Battle Over the Electoral Code: One Electoral District That Suits No Big Party, and Electronic Voting That's Suddenly the Priority

The debate over the new Electoral Code has again dragged the old dividing lines between the parties to the surface - and those lines are, as usual, drawn where it suits the biggest players. Levica claims the government's statements that their demands were accepted "are not true," and that the main demand - a single electoral district - was rejected.

The point Levica makes is sharp: a single electoral district is not a new demand invented overnight - it has been discussed for decades, and it even stands written in the party program of VMRO-DPMNE. The working group to amend the code was formed precisely because of that question. And now, they say, political conditions have been built into the proposed text, and even the solutions there was consensus on have been thrown out.

The most interesting thesis is the one about priorities. The government, Levica claims, is imposing electronic voting for Macedonians abroad as "the most important question for democracy." But that was never a recommendation of the international observers, nor the reason for forming the working group. In other words - the focus is being shifted from what would genuinely make the contest fairer to something that sounds modern but does not touch the core.

And the core, according to this critique, is simple: a single electoral district does not suit the big parties, because it reduces the effect of electoral engineering and creates a fairer contest. Changing the electoral model is allegedly "too big a step," but changing the way of voting for just one specific group is suddenly possible. When the rules keep changing so that the system stays the same, it is worth asking who really benefits from it.

This is an old Balkan story. Every government that reaches the top defends the system that let it get there. Red lines, if they must exist, should be drawn around the rules that create a fairer contest - not around the excuses that preserve the existing one. Whether the new code will be a real reform or just a rearrangement of the same scheme in favor of the same players, the final text will show. So far, the scheme looks familiar.