Regarding the information that appeared in certain media that “there are 16,000 more voters than adult residents in Loznica”, the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government informs the public that the Law on the Single Electoral Roll determines the local authority for registering voters into the Single Electoral Roll. A voter is entered into the Single Electoral Roll according to the place of his/her residence, while a voter who resides abroad is entered into the Single Electoral Roll according to the last place of his/her residence prior to going abroad, i.e. according to the last place of residence of one of his/her parents, with the fact that the Single Electoral Roll also includes information about his/her residence abroad. An internally displaced person is entered into the Single Electoral Roll according to the place where he/she was registered as an internally displaced person. Any change to the Single Electoral Roll is made on the basis of a specific decision.
A closer way of exchanging data which affects the completeness, accuracy and timeliness of keeping the Single Electoral Roll is regulated by the Instruction for the Implementation of the Law on the Single Electoral Roll, whereby the Ministry of the Interior submits data from the official records on the domicile and place of residence of citizens to the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, which classifies them according to the types of changes and submits them to the competent municipal, i.e. city administrations, as well as that the MDULS downloads data from the Civil Records related to the fact of death and other data of importance for updating the Single Electoral Roll, and submits such data electronically to the competent municipal, i.e. city administrations for the purpose of carrying out change ex officio.
The Single Electoral Roll as such, as well as part of the Single Electoral Roll for the area of the City of Loznica, is updated daily based on the established mechanism of communication with the official records of other bodies whose data affect changes concerning the voters in the Single Electoral Roll, and therefore their accuracy.
Therefore, the information about a voter in the Single Electoral Roll is exclusively conditioned by data from other official records (records on domicile and residence or citizenship of citizens, Register of Deaths and Register of Marriages).
Given all the above, we hereby point out that the number of citizens entered into the Single Electoral Roll, both for the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia and for the City of Loznica, cannot be compared with the number of inhabitants from the population census. The population census represents the factual number of citizens because it is done according to the principle of surveying citizens who are available to provide data at the time of conducting the census, and is performed on a voluntary basis, while the Single Electoral Roll is a record of all persons who are of legal age, who are citizens of and have residence in the Republic of Serbia.