Gender & poverty reduction in Europe & CIS

I will vote by myself, thank you

Macedonia, 28 May 2008 – In the run-up to the Early Parliamentary Elections in Macedonia on 1 June, UNDP continues its efforts to deepen democracy. On 26 May, a panel discussion was held to raise awareness among political parties, civil society bodies, the media and the broader public on the need to prevent family voting – a widespread practice and a fundamental violation of electoral rights.

Development of a democratic society in Macedonia is still not complete. One pervasive problem is ‘family voting’, in which one member of the family – usually the husband in a couple or the ‘man of the house’ – decides or influences the voting choices of family members. This occurs through group voting (entering the voting booth together with other family members), open voting (family groups voting together in the open) and proxy voting (obtaining ballot papers ‘on behalf’ of family members). The secret ballot is a fundamental feature of the democratic process, but in the 2006 parliamentary elections, group voting was observed in 20 percent of polling stations.  

This practice has great implications for people’s ability to express their individual wishes as citizens, and predominantly affects women. In Monday’s panel discussion, the UNDP Resident Representative, Maria Luisa Silva Mejias, noted: “The project applies a multi-pronged and multi-stakeholder strategy with a view to address some of the complex roots of this phenomenon, such as lack of awareness on the reasons for voter secrecy, lack of confidence in the integrity of electoral processes, women’s subordinated status in some areas, habits, political manipulations and the like.”

The project has worked on different levels. Although in clear contradiction to national electoral law, family voting persists due to a lack of political will to address the problem. At the ‘high’ level, UNDP and the State Election Commission lobbied to get family voting onto the national political agenda. The success of efforts can be seen in the fact that all the major political parties came together with NGOs, academics and international agencies to discuss prevention activities.

Voter education is crucial to support efforts to have the law enforced, and is the focus of the UNDP project at the level of society more broadly: emphasizing that the right to vote, in secret, belongs to each individual. Education particularly targets young voters and those approaching voting age, including activities in schools under the heading “I have the right to vote”. At this week’s event, an official presentation of the newly published Handbook "One Voter – One Vote: Stop Proxy and Family Voting" took place. The Handbook is produced in 6,500 copies in Macedonian, Albanian and English.

Promotion of voter education through the media will be crucial to the success of these efforts: to that end, many journalists were invited to the panel discussion, and the panel included the secretary general of the Journalists’ Association of Macedonia. Coverage of the event and its aims was substantial in the following days.

Further awareness-raising events with the aim of combating proxy and family voting will follow in the period to come. These contribute to the strong joint efforts of the international community and national institutions to achieve improvement and progress and to ensure that each individual enjoys a minimum democratic freedom, to freely choose his or her representatives in government.

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