The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina asked the BiH Appeals Office to continue with the tender for the procurement of new technologies despite the appeal that was received on that same tender, and it can already be concluded that it will be difficult for the CEC to bring the tender to an end, as many officials have warned about before.
“It is almost impossible to produce and deliver such a quantity of scanners in a short period of time and to implement them in all election places, unless the equipment is already prepared in advance. I doubt that any public institution could carry out the public procurement procedure in such a short time,” said Srđan Amidžić, Minister of Finance and Treasury of Bosnia and Herzegovina, back in July.
By the way, the story about the acquisition of new technologies that would be used in the elections has been going on for several years. With the intervention of Kristijan Šmit, 112 million KM was transferred to the CEC for the procurement of these technologies, primarily devices for the biometric identification of voters and ballot scanners.
After that, on November 14, the CEC announced a tender for the procurement of those devices worth 88 million KM, but just ten days later, three appeals arrived on the tender, some of which the CEC partially accepted.
“Appeals from two companies were accepted. The CEC issued its decision on those complaints and one of the companies complained to the Office for Review of Appeals about that CEC’s decision and it was all forwarded to the Office for action,” a source close to the CEC told “Nezavisnim”.
In the CEC itself, they said that in accordance with the Law on Public Procurement, they submitted a request for the continuation of the public procurement procedure until the end of the appeal procedure.
“Failure to adopt the above-mentioned request for the continuation of the procedure, with the fulfillment of all legal conditions, can cause damage in the way of public interest, because the unjustified extension of the deadlines complicates the process of introducing election technologies in BiH in the general elections of 2026,” said the CEC.
Well-versed in the entire procedure say that it is almost certain that the deadlines defined by the tender will be missed and that it is difficult to expect that we will have new technologies in the 2026 elections. First, considering that the tender documentation has been taken over by numerous companies, more complaints can be expected only after the eventual selection of the supplier. Another question is whether any company can meet the deadline and implement new technologies by next year’s election.
When it comes to tender deadlines, the documentation was available until December 9, and the deadline for receiving offers is December 30 until 2:00 p.m., and the opening of offers is planned for the same day at 2:15 p.m. After the bids are opened, the most favorable one that meets the conditions is chosen, and only after that can complaints be expected.
Procurement includes the delivery of equipment, its installation and configuration, as well as training for the entire system intended for the biometric identification of voters and the scanning of ballots.
“The project envisages the procurement of identification and scanning devices, software licenses, consumables, technical support, production and printing of ballots adapted to the devices, ballot boxes with integrated scanners and external batteries. Procurement services will also include the transportation of equipment to the polling stations and return to storage, as well as the training of trainers and election administration for efficient use and management of the devices,” the CEC announced.
It is interesting that the CEC itself said just a few days before the tender announcement that the condition for its announcement is changes to the Election Law, especially in the part of ballots, given that at the moment there is hardly a scanner that can scan a ballot with hundreds of names on it. However, the CEC announced the tender even without changes to the BiH Election Law, they write Independent newspaper.
