ПОСЛЕДИЦЕ ИЗМЕНА ЗАКОНСКОГ ИЗБОРНОГ ПРАГА НА ПРЕДСТАВЉЕНОСТ СТРАНАКА НАЦИОНАЛНИХ МАЊИНА - ЛОКАЛНИ ИЗБОРИ У СРБИЈИ 2020. ГОДИНЕ
CHANGES TO THE LEGAL ELECTORAL THRESHOLD AND ITS EFFECTS ON REPRESENTATION OF NATIONAL MINORITY PARTIES - LOCAL ELECTIONS IN SERBIA IN 2020

Summary/Abstract: The legal electoral threshold of 5% of valid votes has functioned in the Serbian electoral system for virtually two decades. Since 2004, it has not been applied to the electoral lists of national minority parties. In one cycle of local elections, in 2004, it was reduced to 3%. Ahead of the parliamentary, local and regional elections in 2020, negotiations between the government and the opposition on the conditions for free and fair elections resulted in a unilateral decision by the government to reduce the election threshold at all levels to 3%. In order to preserve the number of representatives of national minority parties, the law introduced a bonus—the quotients of national minority parties are increased by 35% when converting votes into seats using the highest quotient method. Greater representativeness is the basic argument that justifies this great electoral reform. However, the real motive behind this electoral engineering was to weaken the announced boycott of the elections by the opposition. This solution was criticized as contrary to the constitutional principles of equality of suffrage and non-discrimination. Additionally, there were worries that it could lead to fragmentation of the party system and situations where a party that has crossed the electoral threshold is left without a representative. The authentic interpretation of the law explains that the bonus will be applied only if the parties of national minorities do not cross the legal electoral threshold, and only for local elections. The paper analyzes the political consequences of lowering the electoral threshold in local elections in the context of proclaimed goals. The data shows that there was no increase in the number of national minority parties in the elections. As a rule, parties of national minorities won a larger number of seats in local assemblies. This is especially pronounced with the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians as the dominant party of this national minority. That growth is lower in the corps of Bosniaks and Albanians, where there is more pronounced party competition and growth is lower. Through this mechanism, the parties of smaller national minorities have become more visible in local assemblies through If the authentic interpretation had not been applied, the number of deputies of national minority parties would have increased further, and in some areas, the balance of power in forming the majority in local parliaments would have changed. Due to the boycott of the elections and the pandemic that caused lower turnout, the full effect of the new mechanism in the electoral system remained muted. The political consequences will be more visible and clearer after the next election cycle, when the actors will better analyze their potential.

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