Judit Takács

On the same day that Hungarian citizens decided about the composition of the Hungarian parliament for the next four years, the country’s southern neighbour, Serbia also held its presidential and early parliamentary elections on April 3 2022. Though Serbia is not a member of the V4 countries, which are in the focus of our project, it still has a tight geographical and political connection with the region, so it is worthy of note to briefly examine how the state conducted its elections in the shadow of the pandemic and whether its COVID-19 related regulations were enough to prevent a significant rise in the number of new coronavirus cases shortly after the elections.

In contrast to Hungary, which held its first general elections since the outbreak of COVID-19 on 3 April 2022, Serbia had organised previously parliamentary elections on 21 June 2020 as well, so the country has had some experience in how to handle such a situation. Regarding the 2020 elections, like many other countries at the time, Serbia also took several measures to make the voting as safe as possible. The Serbian National Electoral Commission expected poll workers to wear masks and gloves. The regular disinfection of hands, the ventilation of the polling stations and keeping social distance were also required. The latter was expected from the voters as well. In addition, the state introduced a public service announcement video and radio message too, which informed voters about how to protect themselves and others from catching the virus during the exercise of right to vote.

Just like in 2020, Serbia followed the general public health tendencies in the conduct of the elections regarding the pandemic in 2022 as well. The general tendency being that since the second half of February, when the number of new coronavirus cases started to drop wordwide and Russia started a war against Ukraine, more and more European countries seem to have shifted the focus from the pandemic and have lifted most of those restrictions that were imposed due to COVID-19. On 12 March the Serbian government also decided to lift most of its COVID-19 measures, so there were no specific coronavirus related health regulations in force in accordance with the national health protocols on election day.

The V4 countries which held general elections after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 or 2021, such as Poland on 28 June 2020 and the Czech Republic on 8-9 October 2021, introduced very similar measures to those that were applied in the 2020 Serbian elections in order to protect their voters (eg. mandatory to wear a mask, to use disinfectant, to keep social distance). However, during the Hungarian parliamentary elections, which also took place on 3 April 2022, there were no such regulations in place, because Hungary, similarly to Serbia and several other countries, had lifted most COVID-19 restrictions on 7 March. Although the public health conditions were relatively favourable, either voters or the polling staff were encouraged to use hand sanitizer and wear a mask when casting their vote, while additional funds were allocated to local electoral offices to implement feasibly the necessary public health measures.

Despite the fact that it might be questionable whether the COVID-19 situation had improved  sufficiently until April 2022 to lift all specific health measures as unnecessaries on election day in Serbia, if one takes a look at the  coronavirus statistics of the country, there was no significant rise in the number of new COVID-19 cases after the election: in fact the numbers have been almost constantly dropping since February 2022. Besides, the pandemic did not affect the voter turnout negatively either. 57 percent of those who have the right to vote participated in the 2022 Serbian presidential and early parliamentary elections, whereas 47 percent in the 2020 parliamentary elections and 53 percent in the 2017 presidential election.

The Serbian example represents well, that in such periods, when public health risks are less tangible, post-Covid elections might be organised within similar circumstances than before the pandemic also in the Visegrad region. However, during winter periods, when the propagation of the virus could be more intense, and especially in the light of the spread of new variants, public health restrictions may appear again in future elections also.

April 2022

__________________________________________________________

The views expressed above belong to the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centre for Social Sciences