Serbian Voters Wait Hours in Midtown for Homeland Election

The line began forming in the dark. By Sunday midday, it ran down West 45th Street, three blocks north of Bryant Park, and then half a block toward Fifth Avenue: Serbian immigrants from New York and across the Northeast, waiting to cast ballots in a parliamentary election back home.

The polls at Serbia’s Manhattan consulate opened at 2 a.m. and were set to close at 3 p.m., hours that mirrored voting times in Serbia itself. Dozens of people waited roughly two hours to reach the front of the line, according to reporting by Gothamist, which first reported the story. Serbian media reported that hundreds of people were already waiting when the doors opened in the middle of the night. It is unclear why Serbian officials did not adjust the schedule to make voting easier for citizens in the United States.

The election followed a snap vote called by the Serbian government last month, shortly before former President Aleksandar Vučić resigned. His party has held power since 2012, and he had hoped to return as prime minister. The Associated Press reported that he conceded defeat on Sunday. He had faced a student-led opposition movement campaigning against corruption, a movement that grew out of the collapse of a canopy at a train station in Serbia that killed 16 people.

The Midtown consulate was one of only a handful of polling sites the Serbian government set up across North America. Washington, D.C., kept the same hours as New York, while Chicago’s polls ran from 1 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time. The BBC reported long lines at Serbian consulates in Slovenia, Germany, Los Angeles and Paris as well.

Some voters in Midtown blamed the government for the narrow window. Milos Lazic, who lives in Utica and drove down to the city to vote, told Gothamist that officials had tried to discourage turnout but had done it poorly. “They just made people more mad about it,” he said. “That’s why you’re seeing such long lines here.”

Others took a more philosophical view. Dusan Boric, who has lived in New York for about 20 years, said the arrangements could have been better but that voters managed anyway. “This long line actually shows that it’s not a huge deal for anyone here,” he told the outlet.

Stefan Bogner, a Jersey City resident, said he joined the line just before 11 a.m. and had waited about two hours when he spoke with Gothamist. He called the turnout “really wonderful,” noting how far some people had traveled. Marija Vukojevac of Brooklyn, voting abroad for the first time, said she was glad so many people had shown up, whatever the result.

A volunteer effort helped some of those travelers. VoteBnB, a website launched this year to assist Serbians living abroad, listed 59 people in New York City offering places to stay for voters coming in to cast ballots.

A consulate staffer told Gothamist that questions could not be answered without authorization from Belgrade. Serbia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to the outlet’s request for comment.