Political Campaigns
Any Croatian citizen aged 18 or over may become a candidate in presidential, parliamentary or local elections. In order to become an official candidate, 10,000 signatures from Croatian citizens aged 18 or over must be collected and submitted to the State Electoral Commission. This must be done within 12 days following the publication of the decision to hold elections in Narodne Novine, the official gazette of the Republic of Croatia. The endorsements are made in a list comprising name, address and personal identification number (PIN) of each of the citizens supporting a particular candidate. Each citizen may only endorse a single candidate. The election commission verifies the endorsement lists, publishes the candidate list in all daily newspapers in Croatia (and on Croatian Radiotelevision) and delivers it to the Croatian diplomatic missions for publication.
In parliamentary elections, 14-member election lists may be submitted to the State Electoral Commission for any number of constituencies in Croatia. A 14-member list of candidates may also be submitted for the Croatian diaspora constituency, while a two-member list can be submitted for the ethnic-minority representatives. In each case, 500 endorsements are required for an election list to become valid. The lists may be supported by one or more political parties, or by a group of voters as an independent list. No one may be a candidate on two or more lists simultaneously.
The same procedure applies to local elections, except that council-election lists require 100, 150 and 500 endorsements for town, city and county-council lists respectively. The city of Zagreb council is treated as a county council under election law. The number of voter signatures on mayoral and county prefect candidate nominations ranges between 50 (for mayoral elections in towns of up to 1,000 residents), 100 (for other town mayoral candidates), 500 (for mayoral elections in cities of up to 35,000 residents), 1,000 (in cities with populations between 35,000 and 100,000) and 2,000 endorsements for cities of 100,000 residents or more (with the exception of Zagreb). County prefect election candidates require 2,500 endorsements, and candidates running for mayor of Zagreb need 5,000 voter endorsements for their nominations to become valid.
Candidates running for European Parliament seats need not be Croatian citizens and may hold citizenship in any member state of the European Union, while having a permanent (or temporary) residence in Croatia. Their nominations are valid if endorsed by 5,000 Croatian voters.
Read more about this topic: Croatian Elections
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