Home > 2.5 Election campaign > ALBANIA - Joint Opinion on the Amendements to the Constitution of 30 July of 2020 and to the Electoral Code of 5 Octobre 2020
 
 
 
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Paragraph 22
 

It is difficult to anticipate the effect of the introduction of partially open lists on the results. Preference voting will be effective only if it reaches a certain threshold: to change the ranking of the list, a candidate must receive more preference votes than the average number of votes received for each of the seats won by the party or coalition; in any case, the quotient may not be larger than 10,000 votes (Article 163.3 of the Electoral Code). The effect of this innovation will depend on the behaviour of the voters, more precisely on the more or less extensive use they will make of the possibility to vote for a specific candidate. Even if a rather small number of mandates could be distributed differently based on this amendment for the upcoming elections, there might still be some impact on the campaigning tactics. Some interlocutors of the Venice Commission and ODIHR considered that this change would not have a major impact on the results. The level of impact based on this change has to be seen in the elections, but it cannot be excluded that the amendment changes the voting behaviour for many voters and has an impact on the campaigning, too. While its effects have still to be assessed, it seems that this innovation should not be considered a fundamental change.