Bosnia and Herzegovina went to the polls on October 4 with new technology that was meant to end years of vote-rigging.
Chief among the abuses was the casting of ballots in the name of deceased voters who had lingered for years on outdated voter rolls.
At just over 40%, turnout was the lowest since the Bosnian War ended in 1995, in part because the old tricks no longer worked.
In earlier elections, allegations kept surfacing that votes were being cast in the name of people who had died or long since moved abroad. Others said voters cast their ballot multiple times or that blank ballots were added after polls closed to make the turnout look higher.
The voter registry, packed with names of people who had passed away or left the country, was the perfect tool for all of this.
New technology, same old politics
This time, however, every polling station used biometric fingerprint checks.
This represented a clear step forward in making voter identification far harder to manipulate.
Still, the biggest story of this election is not technical. Three nationalist parties won, each within its own community: the SNSD among Serbs, the SDA among Bosniaks and the HDZ BiH among Croats.
The dead may have been struck from the voter rolls, but political trends have not shifted.
For readers who know Bosnia only vaguely, a little background helps: The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war, but it also split the country into two entities: Republika Srpska, which has a Serb majority, and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has a Bosniak-Croat majority.
A three-member presidency runs the state, and each of the three peoples elects its own member.
That is why elections here are rarely about wages and prices and are instead almost always about who is perceived to be a threat.
Republika Srpska and the return of a fallen leader
For Milorad Dodik, the most powerful Serb politician in Bosnia, this election was a political resurrection.
In 2025, Dodik was barred from holding public office for six years after being convicted of defying the high representative, the top international envoy overseeing the 1995 peace process.
He was sanctioned by the US in 2022, although those sanctions were lifted late last year. Even so, his party, the SNSD, virtually swept the board in Republika Srpska.
Savo Minic became president of Republika Srpska, and Zeljka Cvijanovic kept the Serb seat in the presidency. Both are members of the SNSD.
The party also did very well in the entity's parliament. Neither the sanctions nor Dodik's conviction and the loss of his mandate hurt the party. Voters were not choosing an individual. They were choosing their "side."
Dodik lost no time in declaring what comes next.
He announced a return to what he refers to as the "original Dayton." In practice, that means undoing the powers the state has gained since 1995 — from the judiciary to the army. To an outside observer, that sounds like a technical phrase. In reality, it is a program for dismantling the state step by step.
"That means we are returning the army to Republika Srpska, the border police, the intelligence service and everything that the high representatives once took away," said Dodik.
A deal between Serbs and Croats?
The opposition offered no serious resistance. It was divided and had no convincing message.
Voters who did not want Dodik had nowhere to turn, so most stayed home. Low turnout favored the side with the most disciplined party machine.
That raises a question that will shape what happens in Bosnia in the coming year. Dodik's conviction kept him out of the direct race in these elections. But for months, there has been talk of a way out.
If representatives of the SNSD and the HDZ BiH enter the presidency, they could pardon him — whatever the third member decides. Bosnian media have reported that this was a pre-election deal between Dodik and the HDZ BiH leader, Dragan Covic. Dodik could then return as prime minister of Republika Srpska, a post he has held before.
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Troika defeated
The picture in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is different, but the outcome is the same.
The parties of the so-called "Troika," a multi-ethnic liberal political alliance, suffered a defeat. They came to power at this level after the international high representative, a foreigner with the authority to impose laws, changed the election law.
Voters saw no benefit from that experiment. The SDA, the largest Bosniak nationalist party, won the most seats and did well.
The paradox is that SDA president Bakir Izetbegovic lost the race for the presidency. He is the son of Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnia's first president and one of the signatories of the Dayton agreement. The winner was Denis Becirovic of the Social Democrats (SDP), who kept the Bosniak seat.
So, the party won the election, but its leader lost. The son of the man who signed Dayton is now shut out of the institution Dayton created.
"The future of our region lies not in adopting the Russian model but the European one. The message to the EU: Help Bosnia. Let the will of the people be the law of the land," Becirovic said as he declared victory.
A Croat surprise
The same pattern holds among Croats. Darijana Filipovic of the HDZ BiH, their strongest nationalist party, won the Croat seat in the presidency for her party. Filipovic spent years as an aide to Covic, the Bosnian Croat leader.
"HDZ BiH has shown it is brave enough to take a road others would not dare. Who would have dared to nominate me? To some too young, but a surprise to everyone," Filipovic said after the vote.
Three peoples, three nationalist parties, three victories, and not one conversation about how to keep people in the country.
What this means for the state
The most important thing about these elections is not the numbers but the makeup of the presidency. Two women will sit in it: Cvijanovic of the SNSD and Filipovic of the HDZ BiH. Anyone who tries to sell that as a breakthrough for women in politics has missed the point.
Both come from parties that, in different ways, do not want the state in its current form. Both could also decide the fate of a man convicted of defying the international oversight of Dayton.
The HDZ BiH has long demanded a third, Croat entity. The SNSD wants autonomy for Republika Srpska. One side wants to split the state into three, the other into two, but they share the aim of making it smaller.
So, the presidency, which should symbolize a shared state, is again made up of people who feel like guests in it.
All of this is happening as the Western Balkans again becomes a stage for rivalry between Russia, the EU and the US. Dodik openly thanked both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump after his party's victory.
Bosnia has entered a new electoral era with new technology and old politics. Young people are leaving the country in droves. The dead no longer vote, but the living have stopped believing that anything can be different.
