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Success Story
Albanians work together
to mobilize voters and
ensure a fair election
Mobilizing for Free Elections
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Photo: USAID/Stephanie A. Pepi
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Pjerin Marku works for Albania’s
Coalition Against Corruption, an
organization that has trained 3,000
domestic election observers.
TV and radio spots ran for
months. Sample voting
kiosks were set up in 14
cities. The message urging
people to vote was even
placed on sugar packets.
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A month before Albania’s July 3, 2005, parliamentary elections, a dozen people gathered to heatedly discuss where observers should be posted. In the room next door, half a dozen computers were recording the amount of press each party received in newspapers, TV and radio. Every two weeks from May through election day, media monitors held a press conference to reveal their findings.
“We will follow the election, looking for problems and
irregularities — we will follow everything that will happen
from the beginning to the end,” said Pjerin Marku of the
Albania Coalition Against Corruption, an organization that
has trained 3,000 domestic election observers with support
from USAID. “This is the first time that we monitor not only
quantitative data, but also qualitative. After the first report, a
lot of media changed the way they report about the
campaigns” to make their coverage more objective, he said.
To ensure a free and fair election, USAID has supported a
range of activities, including civic forums, televised debates and
media and election monitoring. In cooperation with Albania’s
Central Election Commission, USAID also helped update the
national voter registry and create digital maps, pinpointing
where people live and where the voting sites should be.
In past elections, each of Albania’s 4,700 voter polling stations
counted and reported its own results, but a new law was
passed in December 2004 that instituted centralized counting.
For this election, ballot boxes would be transported to 100
counting centers, reducing the possibility of fraud. USAID
helped train officials on this new process, supporting trips to
observe central counting in Austria and the United Kingdom.
The Commission also held a voter awareness campaign called
“My Vote,” urging voters to cast a ballot. TV and radio spots ran
for months. Sample voting kiosks were set up on the streets of
14 cities. Ads also ran on street banners, billboards and in
newspapers. The message to vote was even placed on sugar
packets. “This is the first time that anything like this has been
done in Albania,” said Adriatik Mema of the Central Election
Commission. “These promotional materials have been done
even in the language of minority groups — so you can find
them in Greek, Serbian, Macedonian.”
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