Izborno zakonodavstvo prve jugoslavenske države (1918. – 1941.)
Electoral Legislation of the First Yugoslav State (1918 – 1941)

Summary/Abstract: Parliamentary life in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia (1918–1941) can be divided in two periods. The first period spans from the 1920s to the second half of the 1930s. The milestone was in 1929 when King Alexander I forcibly dissolved the Parliament and introduced personal dictatorship. The first law was introduced in 1920 and amended merely two years later. The system was based on secret balloting and proportional representation. Eligible voters were adult male citizensand the same system remained in the 1930s. A voter would cast his vote by dropping the ball in the ballot box of his party. At the poll station there was one ballot box for each candidate party. This system had been used in the prewar Kingdom of Serbia due to the high rate of illiteracy. The law from 1920 adopted this method of voting for the same reason. In the 1920s the state was divided in more than 50 electoral units with a fixed number of seats. Parties hada candidate in each of them according to their interest. In each unit, the mandates were distributed separately. The 1931 Law retained the institution of proportional representation. But it was significantly modified by favoring the strongest party. The strongest party was given a larger share of seats comparing its share of votes. Following the idea of Unitarianism, the law introduced a state as a single electoral unit divided into subunits. A candidate list needed a candidate in the whole state and in every subunit. This had forced parties whose programs were mostly locally, nationally or religiously orientated to form a coalition before the election in order to run a candidate in the whole state. In the 1930s a voter expressed his decision by loudly and clearly declaring the name of their candidate to the electoral committee. Establishing a state as a single electoral unit in a multinational state, forcing parties to form coalition in advance and open voting were clearly a step backwards.

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