Civic Monitoring of Presidential Elections 2023

The Centre for Monitoring and Research has been continuously implementing, since 2000, civic election monitoring. CeMI has monitored all national elections since 2001 except the 2013 presidential election. The goal of citizen election monitoring is to assess the election process in accordance with best practices and methodology used by all reputable election monitoring organizations, while changing the long-standing situation in the country due to low voter confidence in elections and questionable legitimacy and legality of the previous election process.

In order to prevent election irregularities, CeMI has been conducting a parallel vote count (PVT) since 2001, on the basis of which we provide rapid assessments of election results. For comparison, in the elections conducted in 2016, the average deviation of the final CeMI estimates in relation to the official election results when it comes to the percentages that the electoral lists won was 0.04%, while there was no deviation when it comes to the distribution of seats. The average deviation in the presidential election of CeMI's estimates in relation to the official results was 0.06%. The estimates are starting to be broadcast live through the CeMI website, through national TV companies that have direct access to CeMI's PVT software, and from now on through this applications.

The 2023 Civic Election Monitoring Project aims to increase electoral integrity in Montenegro by organizing observation of all key aspects of the 2023 parliamentary elections, as well as to increase citizens' confidence in elections by advocating for adequate electoral reforms and policies in line with the best international standards.

CeMI has developed a mobile and web application "Fair Elections" that allows citizens to receive feedback and report possible election irregularities as well as violations of their voting rights. In addition to the application, the application allows the sending of documents, audio and video files and similar evidence confirming the violation of their voting rights.

CeMI's legal team will regularly analyze the received content and act in accordance with it, either by providing free legal assistance to citizens or by informing the public and responsible institutions on the main issues, depending on the nature of the reported cases.

The mobile application will also serve as a mechanism for informing and raising the awareness of citizens / voters about all significant aspects of the election, while it will also enable monitoring of the evaluation of election results in real time by their visitors / users.