Two and a half days of voting for the Diaspora in the first round of the presidential elections

Romanian citizens with the right to vote in the Diaspora will have two and a half days in the first round of the presidential and parliamentary elections to express their voting option, and two days in the second round of the presidential elections, he said yesterday Toni Greblă, president of the Permanent Electoral Authority.

Toni Greblă specified: "If we are still talking about the polling stations abroad, 915 voting stations will be organized, as they were in the European Parliament elections, so the same number of voting stations for abroad will be kept as in the European Parliament elections in June 9.

Obviously, the headquarters of some of the sections may differ because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to find the corresponding sections. Not always the owners, sometimes private or even local authorities, can provide the same premises for the polling station. But they will be announced with number and address in good time, both on our website, on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and on the websites of permanent missions of diplomatic missions and consular offices of Romania abroad. (...) There were proposals, but nothing changed, for reasons that I think you understand in terms of the time allocated to each of these elections. And the one in the country is different from the one abroad. In the country, the elections will end on the Sunday of each type of election at 21:00, with the possibility of being extended if there are people near the polling station. Abroad, they will be in some voting rounds on Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday, in the second round - only on Saturday and Sunday".

The statements of the president of AEP were made in the context in which the Government established, yesterday, by emergency ordinance, a set of measures for the organization and conduct of the parliamentary and presidential elections, the parliamentary elections to be held on December 1, and the presidential elections on November 24 (round I) and December 8 (second round).

Toni Greblă also said after the government meeting: "There will be three government decisions regarding the technical-administrative measures necessary to organize the elections, the election calendar and, thirdly, the budget of expenses necessary to organize these elections. (...) The emergency ordinance provides for the creation of a separate electoral infrastructure for the two types of voting, provides for the manner in which the members of the electoral offices are appointed from the two elections, provides for the level of allowance that these members receive, which is identical to the level of allowances which the members of the electoral offices received in the elections of June 9. (...) Also, several novelties were foreseen regarding voting by mail for Romanian citizens who vote abroad, both for parliamentary and presidential elections. And these novelties are the following: those who received an envelope with the materials necessary for voting by mail and who, until a certain date, different from the two types of elections, were not sent to the electoral office for voting by mail, they will be notified by the Permanent Electoral Authority about this fact and will be able to opt-in, choose to vote at the polling station where they are assigned, announce their intention to vote to a specific station or directly vote at the voting station closest to domicile, of the residence abroad that these Romanian citizens have. If we talk about voting by mail, let's remember that there is the possibility for Romanian citizens with domicile or residence abroad to register on a dedicated site, a site managed by the Permanent Electoral Authority, a site that has been functional since April 1. They will be able to opt for one of the ballots until the end of September, respectively until the end of October. So far, they have expressed their intention to vote by mail - and we have the obligation to send them the envelopes containing the materials necessary for voting by mail - 1,800 or so voters for parliamentarians, 1,900 or so voters for the elections for the president of Romania. In my opinion, this is a very small number of voters who chose to find this way to vote by mail. We have made consistent efforts to inform Romanian citizens with domicile or residence abroad that they can also vote by mail".

The President of AEP drew attention to the fact that the deadline for submitting candidacies for the presidential elections is approximately 50 days before the date of the respective elections for which the first round was set for November 24.