The new Electoral Code is stuck in Parliament yet again, and the usual political crossfire is playing out over who is to blame. VMRO-DPMNE accuses SDSM, Levica and DUI of jointly blocking the code - and claims the reason is their single-digit poll ratings and fear of an electoral defeat.

At the heart of the dispute is one concrete question: the vote of Macedonians living abroad. The government proposes that they be allowed to vote electronically or by post, to make exercising the right to vote easier. The opposition, above all SDSM, opposes such a model - it says it is not against the diaspora voting as a principle, but against a method that, it argues, opens the door to electoral fraud.

And here two legitimate concerns collide, ones rarely stated calmly. On one hand, Macedonians all over the world have the right to take part in their country's elections, and years of difficult access to voting have pushed them away from that right. On the other, any new voting method that is not properly secured genuinely can be abused - and electoral fraud in the Balkans is not theory, it is experience.

The problem is that neither side seems to want a solution more than it wants the other side to stay guilty. The EU has already called for consensus and the timely adoption of the code, since it is part of the reform commitments. But while the parties count poll ratings instead of votes, the code sits still, and the real loser is the voter - the one at home and the one abroad, who still does not know how they will vote at the next election. Who benefits from the deadlock? Answer that yourself.