The second round of the presidential elections

A roundup of the main stories in Romania this week.

Bogdan Matei, 22.11.2019, 13:55

It’s for the 8th time in
its 30 years of post-communist democracy, that Romania is holding presidential
elections. With the exception of the first such elections, held, in 1990, less
than five months after the Revolution, a second round of voting was needed each
and every time, as none of the candidates won half plus one of the votes in the
first round.

In the race this year for a 5-year
term as president of Romania are the incumbent president Klaus Iohannis, who is
backed by the ruling National Liberal Party, and the former Social Democrat
prime minister Viorica Dancila. In the first round, which included 14
candidates, Iohannis won 37.82% of the votes and Dancila 22.26%. Voter turnout
was 51.19%. In the diaspora, where voting took
place over three days, a record turnout was reported, with 675,000 people
casting their ballots.

The second round of voting is also taking place over three days abroad:
on Friday between 12 am and 9 pm and on Saturday and Sunday between 7 am and 9
pm, with the possibility for the voting to be extended until midnight. Voting
is already under way abroad, the earliest to open being the polling stations in
New Zealand and Australia. The polling stations on the west coast of the US are
the latest to close, on Monday morning at 7 am. The same number of polling
stations as in the first round has been maintained, 835, but the location of
some of them has been moved for objective reasons. The permanent electoral
authority has approved a request from the foreign ministry to change the
location of certain voting stations in Germany, the UK and Spain as the venues
used in the first round were no longer available.

Iulian Ivan, who works in the foreign ministry’s department for
electoral processes:

I’d like to remind Romanian citizens that if they note a high flow of
voters at a certain polling station, they may ask the president or members of
that polling station about the location of a nearby station. Voters may contact
the electoral bureau for polling stations abroad in relation to any problem
encountered during the voting process.

The foreign ministry has advised Romanian citizens to check the
addresses of the polling stations on the ministry’s website and exercise their
right to vote over the course of the three days. In Romania, the second round
of the presidential elections is only taking place on Sunday, November the 24th.
Like in the first round, polling stations open at 7 am and close at 9 pm, but
may stay open until midnight if voters are still queuing.