Macedonia – Constitutional amendment

Balkan Insight reports that Macedonia has passed a constitutional amendment that affects the election of the president.

The amendment reduces the turnout needed to elect the president. Assuming no candidate won a majority of the registered electorate at the first ballot, a second ballot is required. Regarding the second ballot, Article 81 of the 1991 constitution stated:

1) A candidate is elected President if he/she wins a majority of the votes of those who voted, provided more than half of the registered voters voted.
2) If in the second round of voting no candidate wins the required majority of votes, the whole electoral procedure is repeated.

In other words, the successful candidate still needed to win a majority of the registered electorate.

It appears that the various parties and the EU considered the threshold to be too high. Therefore, it has been reduced. Now, the threshold is 40% of the registered electorate – the clause that only two candidates can contest the second ballot has not been changed. (The BDI party had proposed a change to a parliamentary system with the president elected by parliament).

Constitutional amendments can be made by a two-thirds majority in the Assembly.

The next presidential election will be held on 15 March 2009.

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