The process might be more important than the outcome in Tirana’s election results
TIRANA TIMES
TIRANA, July 8–The news about Tirana’s elections is sounding a bit like a broken record: the Socialists have brought repeated challenges to Electoral College judges, and the final results keep getting postponed. The music must stop at some point though, and Albanians will have an official result and the reactions of the parties involved to that official result. Perhaps more importantly, there will be a precedent on how to deal with important close elections in Albania.
The final Electoral College decision is scheduled to be released Friday, shortly after this newspaper goes to press. Based on the previous decisions of the Electoral College, the opposition is realistically worried at this point that the result will not go its way, and is asking for the elections in Tirana to be repeated. In addition to previous arguments, the Socialists now say an investigation they conducted on their own shows the number of votes in the boxes was slightly different that the number of voters, which they say skewed the results.
They have presented these latest arguments to the judges who now must decide. The outcome remains to be seen, but whatever happens, the Electoral College decision will set a precedent on how to deal with tight elections in Albania. And the decision should be the judges’ to make, free of pressure from either side.
The world knows tight elections. Perhaps the most famous one was that between George W. Bush and Al Gore. It is only fitting then that a recent article by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, who headed the George W. Bush legal team in that argument, would deal with the Tirana elections. In his article in the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine, Baker writes the final decision should be based on law and the decision of the Electoral College – not a new election or a negotiated solution. Only a law-based solution works in a democracy, he argues.
“When razor-thin elections happen, it is futile to suggest that the two sides should attempt to negotiate a solution or work out their differences through dialogue. There was no possibility of a negotiated solution between George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida in 2000, and surely there is none in Tirana today. One candidate will win; one will lose,” Baker writes, adding it is also inappropriate in such a case to throw out the old results and hold a new election. “It would be nonsense to tell voters that their vote really matters נexcept, that is, when an election is so close that their vote could actually determine the outcome,” he writes.
But what makes Baker’s arguments interesting is the explanation of human nature he provides. “Ballot-counting is an art as much as a science, and when an election is so close that every ballot could affect the outcome, it turns out that human judgment has an uncomfortably large influence over the counting process,” he writes.
In the United States it was ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court that decided, and that’s the type of solution Baker advocates for in his article – obey Albania’s Electoral College, a panel of independent appellate judges chosen at random.
Of course Albania’s democratic and legal institutions, including the Electoral College, are in their infancy compared to the well-established institutions of the United States. Nonetheless the final decision of the Electoral College will set an important precedent for future elections in Albania. That decision, but perhaps more importantly how the parties react to it, will let future Albanian leaders how to handle losing close elections, even if they feel it is unfair.
If we are looking for a global precedent, there is certainly on in Gore v. Bush. Gore won the popular vote in the United States, but due to the federal U.S. electoral system he lost the election. Even after the heated debate in the courts, he graciously accepted losing, so the country could move on. There are lessons for Albania in that. Solutions don’t have to be perfect. But they do have to work.
