any action that jeopardizes electoral rights: just as the LEMP, the Local Elections Law stipulates that ‘[n]o one may, on any grounds whatsoever, prevent a person from voting or force them to vote, hold them to account for having voted, or require them to declare who they voted for or why they did not vote’ (Article 3, Local Elections Law). According to the Law on the Single Electoral Register,16 the comprehensive electoral register contains the Transparency would be promoted if current rules were integrated record of Serbian nationals who have suffrage. applied and extracts from the The government set up this single record on the eve of the electoral register were made publicly available by all local 2012 election. The electoral register is maintained by the authorities. Doing so would also ministry responsible for public administration according to allow voters who are not the rules of administrative proceedings, and authorities’ registered or whose details in the register are inaccurate to decisions about the register may be contested before the apply for registration or seek Administrative Court. Article 14 of this law requires the corrections. municipal or city administration charged with updating the electoral register for the local authority area to publicly display the extract from the electoral register for that local authority area once an election has been called, and to advertise this fact in the media. However, monitoring missions have for years warned of the underutilization of this arrangement, with the public insufficiently aware of this option. The set of electoral laws and the Law on the Single Electoral Register provide ‘substantive and procedural regulation’ of elections, and spell out the rules of ‘electoral mathematics and electoral techniques’.17 Moreover, some electoral rules are contained in regulatory enactments of the REC. The frequent changes to these regulations have prompted Serbian and foreign monitoring missions to recommend that all issues that are not technical in nature should be moved into primary legislation, whilst secondary legislation (instructions, rulebooks, calendars) should only be used to regulate technical aspects. 4.1.2. Electoral dispute resolution: bodies and procedures 4.1.2.1. Republic Electoral Commission Character and composition of electoral administration bodies A special electoral administration is created to oversee Serbian elections. Experts disagree as to the legal nature of bodies that constitute the electoral administration. Some see them as public authorities sui generis, whilst others believe the electoral administration bodies are separate sub-units of executive bodies.18 A third possible perspective views these bodies as quasi-judicial in that they rule on the rights of individual members of the public. Law on the Single Electoral Register, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, Nos. 104/2009 and 99/2011. Maja Nastić, Izborna pravila u Srbiji i evropski standardi: opšte pravo glasa, Zbornik radova Pravnog fakulteta u Nišu, broj 69, godina 53, 2014, p. 192. 18 Dejan Milenković, Organi nadležni za sprovođenje izbora – pojam i oblici izborne administracije (uprave) u Srbiji, Zbornik Izbori u domaćem i stranom pravu, Institut za uporedno pravo, Beograd, 2012, p. 182. 16 17 23