Macedonia to change presidential election rules

Macedonia’s parliament has adopted a motion approving a constitutional amendment to the country’s presidential election rules, according to news reports reaching here Thursday. Parliament voted late Wednesday to lower the minimum voter turnout in presidential election runoffs from 50 percent to 40 percent.

The move reflects authorities’ concern that there is still a risk of a vote being nullified because of low voter turnout in the next presidential election scheduled for March 2009. Turnout in the last election in 2004 was 56 percent.

“Almost all presidential election runoffs in Macedonia were marred by irregularities and incidents,” Macedonia’s Justice Minister Mihajlo Manevski said.