Election Day in Kosovo

I was wrong. Elections aren't on Sunday (tomorrow), they're today (Saturday). The polls are open from 7am-7pm, and voter turn out is expected to be high. In Kosovo, the elections have been organized by OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). I was fortunate to sit and have coffee yesterday with someone who was able to explain the basics of the municipal election system (parliamentary elections are today also). When voters go to the polls, they first select a party to vote for (there are six) and then they vote for 10 candidates within that party (there's no voting across parties). After the votes have been tallied and it is determined the percentage of the votes each party received, the top vote-earning candidates from each party then form the local government. Forty-five people will be elected. The impression I was left with is that this system of elections was formulated by OSCE specifically for Kosovo and there's no prior model of voting that this has been adapted from.

When I woke up this morning I decided to walk around and take photos of candidate ephemera. Posters are slapped on everything: trees, walls, fences, empty buildings, planters...any available surface appears to be fair game. Of course, this is leading to a fair amount of trash as well. My guess is that nobody goes around and takes down their posters. Rather, the posters are just left to fall down and make their own way into the trash bins.