Albanian local elections, 2011
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The Albanian local elections of 2011 took place on 8 May 2011 in Albania. Electors were asked to elect their municipality's mayor, municipal council members, municipal unit mayor, and municipal unit members. The elections were administrated by the Central Election Commission of Albania. Only 9 of the 384 winning candidates were women.
The two coalitions taking part in the 2011 local elections were the Coalition of the Citizen (Albanian: Aleanca për Qytetarin) formed by the Democratic Party of Albania and Coalition for the Future (Albanian: Aleanca për të Ardhmen) formed by the Socialist Party of Albania.
In total, 7882 voting centers in the country opened at 7:00 am and closed at 8:00 pm. The voter turnout countrywide was about 50.9%.
The Socialist Party-led Coalition of the Future published a poll that predicted the electoral victory of Edi Rama in Tiranë, while TV Klan, an Albanian private channel published a poll of the Gani Bobi Institute predicting a victory of Lulzim Basha.
The counting process lasted 6 days and was marked by mutual stalls from parties involved, and the intervention of most prominent foreign Ambassadors accredited to the country for moving the process forward. On 14 May 2011, after the last ballot box determining the result for the Tirana election was counted, it revealed that Edi Rama, the Coalition for the Future candidate was ahead by only 10 votes from Lulzim Basha, the candidate of the Coalition for the Citizen. Thus, the pre-eliminary result pointed to Edi Rama as the winner of the Tirana Mayoral election. The tally was awaiting final certification by the KQZ.
The latter declared that ballots inserted on the wrong ballot boxes should have been counted as well. Indeed, voters were asked to elect local city, and municipal unit mayors as well. Thus, KQZ overrode local KZAZ's decisions and started to count all invalid ballots cast on the wrong ballot boxes. The final tally revealed that Lulzim Basha won the Tirana race by 81 votes more than Edi Rama. Thus, the winner for the Tirana mayoral chair was declared to be Lulzim Basha. Edi Rama filed an appeal at the Electoral College to overthrow the result and re-instate the May 14 tally that pointed to him as the winner of the election. All instances rejected Rama's appeal, and on July 25, 2011 Lulzim Basha was sworn in as the new Mayor of Tirana.
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