VREME: Can the votes and turnout of refugees from Kosovo influence those 13 "Kosovo seats"?
LUCIC: It is not known where they will vote. That is, according to the law, they can vote wherever they want, but that procedure is rather complicated. My impression is that rather than encouraging those people to vote, the authorities are trying to prevent them from voting because the expectation is that they will mostly vote against Milosevic. But the authorities want to have their votes "at disposal", to "spend" those votes in some way after all. There, we already can see the outline of possible electoral fraud. According to the published data there are 187,000 refugees from Kosovo in Serbia, and the authorities have already released information that they have 350,000 votes from Kosovo at their disposal. The CeSID cannot determine where this difference of 150,000 Kosovo votes is coming from and we do not know what will happen with those votes because we even do not know where these voters are expected to vote.
How can "ethnic Albanian" votes be abused?
According to the poll conducted by Strategic Marketing, almost five million voters will participate in the forthcoming elections, which significantly narrows the possibilities for electoral fraud. If they really want to steal something, they have to steal from the ethnic Albanian electorate, and we shall know whether they have stolen even a single vote, as soon as they publish the official results. Another big unknown is the behavior of the SNP in Montenegro if the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) wins a majority and if Slobodan Milosevic does not win in the first round of the presidential elections, as should happen according to all the public opinion polls published so far including the polls ordered by the SPS and the JUL. They are aware of their standing. Otherwise, they would not behave like this.
Does that explain the increase in pre-election violence in Serbia?
Last Friday, the Police broke in to CeSID's offices, even though the CeSID is a totally benign organization which is not politically active and does not support any political option. The regime accuses such an organization of no less than enabling KFOR to steal Trepca and being backed by Louise Arbour, Wesley Clark and George Soros. If we are a problem for them, then they must be seriously panicking.
Why would four fifths of electorate participate in the elections? Aren't the published opinion polls to optimistic?
I personally do not know anyone who will not vote, including the generation that has become eligible to vote since the last election. A few years ago that generation with indignation rejected any idea of getting involved in "dirty" politics. Once the authorities called the elections, the situation significantly changed. The "climate" was different. Before that, polls indicated that Kostunica had only 4 percent of support among the voters, while Slobodan Milosevic had four times more supporters. Based on the opinion polls conducted by "their" firms, among other Markplan, they concluded that no politician can compete with Milosevic. However, at the moment when Kostunica became a possible presidential candidate, his rating jumped sevenfold. That is confirmed by all polls, both "ours" and "theirs".
Why is the voter turnout important?
My estimate is that if the turnout is five million, and close to five million already voted in 1990 and 1992, the authorities will have very limited possibilities for vote rigging. Numbers indicate that at this moment Slobodan Milosevic enjoys the support of between 22 and 26 percent of voters, or between 1.5 and 1.7 million voters. Even if he collected the whole 2 million votes out of 4.5 voters, he would still need another 500,000 votes. But, here the mathematics starts to kick in. By stealing 250,000 votes you automatically increase the turnout to 4.75 million and to reach the magic number of 50 percent plus one vote, you have to steal at least 500,000 votes... At this point, it stops being "ordinary" electoral fraud. Already with the turnout of 4.5 million, the volume of necessary electoral fraud is too large, and with the turnout of 5 million electoral fraud has almost no chance of affecting the outcome of the elections.
Neglecting for the moment the initial advantage of the authorities, at which points of the electoral process is it possible to "steal"?
Contrary to a widespread opinion, it is impossible to manipulate the results in the final stage, during the electronic addition of votes. Main spots for electoral fraud are polling booths, where the records and results are compiled. In the 1996 elections for the lower chamber of the Federal Parliament, there were hundreds of voting precincts where the coalition SPS-JUL-ND won hundred percents of cast ballots with turnouts of hundred percent. Fraud at voting precincts is prevented by rigid control of all 9,000 precincts. Many voting precincts, if there is no opposition control, are never opened for voting. Therefore, the opposition must be at every voting precinct. In that case, mass fraud is impossible. In the 1997 elections, voters received ballots with in advance circled name of one candidate. For example in the factory YUMCO in Vranje, the director summoned the employees and gave them a ballot with a circled name of the SPS candidate and the employees were supposed to deliver a "clean" ballot on Monday following the elections to the director as a proof that they had used the marked ballot.
That brings us to the printing of ballots...
The printing is organized by the Federal election commission (FEC), which does not allow that anyone control the printing of the ballots. Again, the ballots will be distributed in advance and pressure will be exerted on the voters... But it is very easy to spoil those ballots, by circling another name on them, crossing over the ballot, without the risk of loosing a job or being punished in some other manner.
At the elections four years ago, you were a member of the Federal Election Commission. What were you experiences from that job?
Interesting. The law charges the FEC with taking care of the electoral rolls. I raised that issue at one of our meetings. The president at the time, and presently a member of the commission, Rajko Nisavic, asked me how I would control the electoral rolls. "Put a computer in the Parliament and give me access to the electoral rolls," I suggested. "No way!" "Why?" "Because the law does not specify how the control of the electoral rolls is supposed to be conducted". Amazingly, the FEC refused to do its job, while on the other hand it changed the name of the coalition "Zajedno" because the first candidate on the coalition's list, Dragoslav Avramovic, withdrew, even though this was outside its jurisdiction. The third thing is manipulation with ballots, whose printing is controlled exclusively by the FEC: Politika's print shop stretched the job that could have been completed in on only one afternoon over four weeks and printed ballots using unprotected, plain, imported paper, imported from Poland, without any control. That's how it will be this time as well, and therefore electoral fraud can be annulled only by a large turnout.
In other words, the ruling coalition will try to scare people in hope that they will not vote?
That is a two-edged sword. The moment the state television spewed all sorts of accusations against the CeSID - that it is financed from abroad, that it is a mercenary organization, that we were to be blamed for the occupation of Trepca by KFOR - we received hundreds of calls from people who wanted to volunteer to be election monitors. When on Friday, the Police raided our offices, again a large number of volunteers showed up... The CeSID will definitely observe these elections, either within voting precincts or outside them. If our observers are denied access to voting precincts, what can they do? First, it is important to determine whether a voting precinct was opened at all or not, then whether the opposition member of the election commission was at the precinct, whether he or she at any moment left the precinct... Also, we will know the names of all members of the election commissions, so that no one can count on anonymously violating election rules or engaging in electoral fraud.
However, could electoral fraud in the end significantly change the will of the voters?
Perhaps Milosevic does not care about the rest of the world, but he cares a lot about an apparently legal victory in the elections. Just like the main news program of the state-controlled TV, he would like to proclaim that "we are legal representatives and the people back us..." He needs that badly. On the other hand, another bout of massive election fraud will also change the situation with their members and supporters. I personally know numerous SPS members who are extremely honest people, who cannot permit themselves to be dragged forever to an abyss and be manipulated... Only a handful of individuals will follow them on that path.
That is an issue for a psychologist, not for mathematicians. The end of Slobodan Milosevic's tenure in office is getting closer and his advisers guaranteed him a victory...
In the past Milosevic did not exhibit that sort of carelessness.
In the past, he really had an advantage. He really defeated Panic. There are municipalities in Kosovo in which Milan Milutinovic in the 1997 elections won 13 times more votes than Milosevic in 1992, which means that for Milutinovic they had to steal 13 times more votes than for Milosevic. Kosovo was used as a bottomless reservoir of votes, and they plan to repeat that in these elections. They bribed for signatures on fake lists. Now there are anecdotes about a changed situation. For example, one of the opposition parties had been thrown out of its offices in town P. The president of the local organization of that party went to see the mayor and told him only four sentences: "Rade, you are a good man. Be smart as well. It is over. We are coming". They were allowed to return to their offices.