I live and work in Prishtina. I use its overcrowded buses, drink its water with manganese, breathe its polluted air, spend money in its restaurants and markets, and pay rent here every month.

Every day, I receive services and contribute to the local economy of the capital. But when the day comes to vote in the local elections, I get in my car and drive to Kamenica to cast my vote. Legally, I am still a resident of Kamenica, where I pay property taxes and spend most weekends with my parents. Many other people who work and live in Prishtina share a similar reality.

In a country with a population of approximately 1.6 million, about one-third of the population resides in the capital, Prishtina, due to the centralization of opportunities offering better futures and the lack of investment in other municipalities. Internal migration, where 16% of Kosovo citizens live in a municipality other than their birthplace, has been compounded by external migration, which has caused the population of other municipalities to shrink every year.

Contrary to this trend and based on the Municipality of Prishtina’s statistics, the capital’s population has grown significantly and is now estimated to exceed 400,000 inhabitants. According to the 2011 census, Prishtina had 198,897 inhabitants, while 13 years later, the 2024 census recorded 227,466 — only 28,569 more. This number is far from the city’s reality, however, because every year the capital gains new residents: students who remain after completing their studies due to better employment opportunities, and young couples who, for similar reasons, choose Prishtina as their home. 

This has led to a construction boom and a rapid vertical expansion of the city, where housing demand has become the primary driver of urban development. Nonetheless, many of these developments do not meet the basic conditions of urban living — such as kindergartens, public spaces or recreational areas in each neighborhood — making the city’s expansion more a consequence of necessity than the result of planning aimed at improving quality of life.

Yet these residents do not translate into voters, as the majority are still registered as residents of the municipalities they come from, where they continue to vote. In the local elections in October of this year, only 222,326 citizens were eligible to vote in the capital — almost half the number of those who actually live there.

Internal migration has changed the way we live, but not the way we vote, and this has direct consequences for how municipalities are funded by the central government, ultimately affecting their capacity to provide services to their actual residents

Why don’t I vote in Prishtina?

Is it more right to decide about the future of a place where I no longer live, or about the one where I am actually building my life? This is a dilemma similar to the debates that arise every election about diaspora voters: why should they vote in central and local elections when, for most of the time, they don’t live in Kosovo? Although Kosovo has about 1.5 million resident inhabitants, over two million voters are on the voter list. In the last local elections, 44,000 voters from the diaspora were also registered.

In small municipalities like Kamenica, where fewer than 15,000 citizens voted in the October local elections, each vote carries greater weight than in large cities like Prishtina. Mathematically, my vote “counts” more there because the impact of each voter on the final result is greater in a small electoral body. But at the same time, the purpose of voting is not simply the numerical weight it carries, but the real impact it can have on everyday life. Even though I no longer live in Kamenica, I am more familiar with the local political context there — the people running and the real possibilities of what can be achieved, which, for me, justifies and makes my decision to vote there.

However, this gap between actual and legal residence is not only a matter of political representation but also a financial issue that directly affects the quality of public services.

The municipal budget in Kosovo is determined through a formula approved by the Ministry of Finance (MoF), which combines central grants with municipalities’ own revenues. Grants are divided into general and conditional: the former allow municipalities to plan according to their priorities, while the latter are allocated to specific areas such as education, health and social services.

The formula is based mainly on the number of registered residents, the number of students and patients, ethnic composition and territorial size. In principle, municipalities where the number of residents is decreasing, such as Kamenica, lose financial resources, while those with growing populations, such as Prishtina, receive additional funds.

But what happens when, like me, 200,000 residents of Prishtina choose to remain registered and vote in municipalities they visit only on weekends? The fact that many citizens are still listed as residents of small municipalities where they no longer live artificially maintains the high number of registered residents, and consequently, affects the growth of the municipal budget. Yet this benefit exists only on paper, because financial resources are allocated for residents who no longer live there, while public services are planned for people who actually reside in that municipality — creating a double inequality.

This gap between “legal residence” and “real residence” makes the local financing system inefficient and unfair for both sides.

In 2024, when the population census was conducted in Kosovo, the current mayor of Prishtina, Përparim Rama, said that the lack of accurate data on the number of residents in the capital also hinders the provision of services to citizens:

“We receive numbers from the central level so that we can hire administrators and civil servants who will be able to serve citizens. We received permission to hire a certain number in relation to the number of residents of the capital. However, if, for example, Prishtina has 189,000 registered residents today, we know based on electricity and water meters, the number of citizens actually living in the capital is over 400,000, a figure also based on measurements made by the World Bank. So, we are serving twice the number of citizens with half the staff that we currently have,” Rama said in April 2024.

This discrepancy affects local decision-making by voters who do not directly experience the consequences of local policies. As a result, municipal assemblies and mayors often make decisions that impact residents who have had no real opportunity to influence them, while a portion of those who daily live in cities like Prishtina but vote elsewhere remain unintegrated into the political life of the city where they spend most of their time.

In this context, municipalities are often led by political platforms voted for by people who do not live there and cannot hold them accountable for their promises and actions. This weakens accountability and breaks the connection between citizens and local government, distancing democracy from people’s daily lives.

Reasons vs. Belonging

To correct this system in favor of municipalities, where the budget and local government respond to the needs of residents, changes are needed at several levels.

First, Kosovo needs to initiate a debate on the way municipal grants are distributed. If local budgets continue to be based only on the number of registered residents, rather than the real number of those living in a municipality, the distribution of public resources will remain unequal. A mechanism that combines census data with actual housing data, collected through public services or other institutions, would be a step toward fiscal equality between municipalities.

Second, institutions need to implement the Law on Residence and Stay, which obliges citizens to notify the responsible authorities of any change of residence, inside or outside the country. Implementing this law would make it easier to track population movements.

Third, this issue is also related to local political identity. Should we vote where we feel emotionally connected or where we live every day and face the consequences of local decisions? There is no simple answer, but asking this question is necessary for a democracy that functions in accordance with social reality. This debate must include citizens, political parties, civil society and public institutions. Only in this way can a local voting and financing system be created that responds to the country’s new demographic dynamics.

If we want local democracy to be representative and functional, the system must reflect reality, not just emotional connections. We must build a framework that preserves financial equality — by not punishing municipalities experiencing demographic decline with budget cuts, but also by not keeping them artificially alive at the expense of those that are growing. This is a decision that requires political will, as well as a genuine debate about the way we want to live and be governed.

This is also a question for society: do we want to continue living in a system that does not reflect demographic reality, or do we want to take steps to make local democracy fairer and more representative? In theory, I know that my vote would have more meaning in Prishtina, where I live and face the consequences of local politics every day. But when election day comes, my vote returns to Kamenica — evidence that reason and logic often clash with a sense of belonging. For this dilemma to be addressed systemically, rather than remaining personal, a broad public debate on civic responsibility and a review of the legal framework that aligns voting with real residence are needed.

Feature image: Arrita Katona – Atdhe Mulla / K2.0