Ohio on the Neretva

Novi List is reporting on charges of election fraud in the first round of the Croatian presidential election. According to the article, in two places in Hercegovina, in Čapljina and Orašje, votes were counted from people who had died and from people who did not turn up at the polls (it is likely that there were some people who fell into both categories). Although the deadline for appeals of the election results has passed, it is not too late for criminal charges of election fraud to be filed.

It looks as though it is possible that fraud in Hercegovina might have changed the results of the first round. According to the article, Stjepan Mesić came 14,005 votes short of winning in the first round. He received 4, 825 votes from Hercegovina, while Jadranka Kosor received 36, 783 votes of the 54,112 people who voted there.

Update: Two developments. The election monitoring group GONG has filed criminal complaints related to the election fraud. Jadranka Kosor was asked by Dražen Ciglenečki of Novi List how it felt to be the candidate whom dead people prefer, whereupon her bodyguard attacked the TV cameraperson who was filming the exchange. No bananas are believed to have been involved.

Update2: Drax has a pretty persuasive argument that none of this enhances the image of GONG, which failed to spot the fraud in time and which emerged with inaccurate projections of the results.

Update3: Count on Stipe Mesić to clear things up. He states, "I don't believe that dead people voted over there, but somebody certainly voted in their place."

Update4: It would be interesting for someone to run the crosstabs and see whether the inclination of a dead person to vote for HDZ correlates in any way with the historical period in which they lived.