Requested by: Montenegro, Parliament

Recommended Measures:
Key recommendations: A. Cases and procedures for dismissal or replacement of members of election commissions – including polling boards - should be made more precise, and open to judicial review; consideration should be given to defining a dispute settlement mechanism in order to prevent and/or to counteract any abuse of the Parliament’s right to dissolve the CEC; B. Adequate representation of national minorities in membership of election commissions should be ensured; C. The draft law should establish detailed rules for signature collection and verification. Clear liability rules and sanctions for violations, including for forgery of registration documents and breaches of voters’ personal data integrity, need to be established in line with previous ODIHR recommendations; D. Repeat elections should only be required in case of gross violation of the law where the discrepancy could have affected the election results and subsequently the allocation of mandates. Other recommendations A. Continue harmonising different election-related laws to avoid legal collisions and to address the remaining gaps and ideally to proceed to a codification of the whole election-related legislation; B. Ensure level playing field to all contestants, introducing a limit on the amount of paid political advertising; C. Consider prescribing obligatory online publication by all election commissions of their decisions on complaints immediately upon adoption of these decisions.

Measures taken: According to information available, the draft law has not been adopted.