Kovacevic Questions Bosnia Vote Count After 7 PM Turnout

Election results in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina are not final yet, and Serbia is watching them closely, partly because of the race for the Serb member of the Presidency. According to the latest tally from the Central Election Commission (CIK) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zeljka Cvijanovic has 294,813 votes, or 55.50 percent, ahead of Marinko Bozovic with 140,463. In the Croat part of the same race, the process itself is now publicly contested: Slaven Kovacevic, the Democratic Front (DF) candidate for the Croat member of the Bosnian Presidency, raised accusations on October 6 about turnout, biometrics and invalid ballots.

Where do the results in the Croat race stand?

According to the CIK tally updated at 7:15 a.m., with 3,082 of 3,177 polling stations in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina counted, or 97 percent, Darijana Filipovic of the HDZ BiH has 109,827 votes. Kovacevic is second with 72,128, and Zdenko Lucic is third with 54,072. The gap between first and second place is 37,699 votes. Index.hr gives Kovacevic 72,150 votes, so the two sources differ by 22 votes.

The tally is preliminary. It does not yet include mail-in ballots, votes from voters who were absent, mobile teams and diplomatic and consular missions, nor confirmed ballots. We have already reported on Filipovic’s preliminary win.

What does Kovacevic claim about turnout?

His first objection concerns turnout on October 4. Kovacevic says that in parts of the country where the HDZ BiH holds power or a majority, turnout at 5 p.m. was between 30 and 33 percent and by 7 p.m. had passed 40 percent. By his calculation, that would mean between 70,000 and 100,000 additional voters in two hours. He opened his statement by saying he had been personally wronged:

“Allow me to think that we have been seriously robbed, the DF and I. Especially I have been robbed personally”

He explained his calculation this way:

“As an example, I offer information that the CIK officially published on turnout on October 4 at 5 p.m. At that time, in parts of our country where the HDZ holds power or a majority, turnout at 5 p.m. was 30-33%, and then suddenly turnout goes over 40% and that by 7 p.m., which is operationally impossible. I looked at the official CIK information. Why? If we count such places, where the HDZ holds power, then it would look like about 70-100,000 new or additional voters exercised their electoral right in just two hours. Do you really think that 70-100,000 voters in a couple of hundred places can exercise their right to vote in just two hours? Operationally? That is operationally impossible, or if it is not, tell us how”

The figure of 70,000 to 100,000 is Kovacevic’s estimate, not CIK data.

What is disputed about biometrics and voting after 7 PM?

The second concern is the relationship between the number of voters recorded through biometric identification and the number of ballots cast. Kovacevic believes a manual recount of ballots would not solve the problem, and he asked the CIK what it will do if there are more ballots than voters identified by biometrics:

“What if you have more ballots than the number of voters established by biometrics, and it goes over those 2% mentioned in the instruction? What then? Will you, for your own sake, formally dismiss all complaints about such anomalies, or will you take them into account? Will you organize new elections at those disputed polling stations, annul the results, or bring down democracy through verification”

Kovacevic concedes that voters already standing in line at 7 p.m. must be allowed to vote. As Index.hr reports, the law permits this. He still claims that data from the biometric system and the scanners show voting at some polling stations until almost midnight. He also asked whether voters were sent to polling stations in an organized way after 7 p.m. rather than waiting in line:

“Will you accept that there was no line in front of the polling station, but that someone was organizing the sending of voters after 7 p.m., and that the non-partisan committees supposedly accepted this? Is something like that a matter of the factual situation or of overvoting, which the CIK possibly accepts outside the valid law?”

How many ballots are invalid?

Kovacevic says there are about 350,000 invalid ballots in total, of which about 60,000 are for the Bosnian Presidency alone. The statement carried by the FENA news agency does not specify which set of ballots the first figure refers to. In the CIK tally from 7:15 a.m., 824,292 ballots were processed, of which 791,708 were valid, meaning 32,584 were invalid, but that tally does not cover all polling stations or all types of voting.

On the 60,000 ballots, Kovacevic said:

“Finally, 350,000 invalid ballots is strange, I saw some flimsy explanation, but 60,000 invalid ballots just for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina is seriously strange, where voting is simple and where the explanation simply does not hold water. What about that, which changes the outcome of the elections entirely? Will it again be that situation, you reject it and it remains as an undemocratic state of affairs, but you have formally protected yourselves? I call that, the system protects itself, aware of the irregularities. Someone could even earn a criminal complaint. It is up to you and your decision”

What does he want from the CIK?

Kovacevic stressed that he fully supports the new voting system and electronic counting, but said, in his words, that questions remain that could change the picture of the results. He expects the CIK to act according to the law, and he announced that every manipulation will be recorded and examined legally. He ended his statement with this line:

“A system that protects itself is not a system”

The CIK of Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to update its data, and the commission’s official website still lists the results of the 2026 General Elections as preliminary. We could not find a CIK response to Kovacevic’s claims.