This result is explainable by a ruling of the Constitutional Court during the 2000 elections.[39] In that case, brought by a group of ethnic Serb voters residing abroad, the Court decided that the voter certificate requirement could be upheld only for persons with temporary, not “habitual”, or “longer-term”, residence abroad (This made it possible for longer-term residents abroad to use out-of-country voting facilities; but many refugees nonetheless would have lacked the necessary citizenship documents or other current evidence of eligibility in order to obtain ballots).
