Preparations for the elections abroad
The Bucharest authorities have announced the measures taken for the organization of the presidential and parliamentary elections abroad.
Bogdan Matei, 12.11.2024, 14:00
After the local and European parliamentary elections, held simultaneously on June 9, Romanians are preparing for an election marathon. They will vote three Sundays in a row, on November 24 and December 8 for the presidential elections and on December 1, on Romania’s National Day, for the legislative elections. Leaders of the parliamentary parties, representatives of marginal or independent factions, make up the 14 candidates for the position of head of state. One of them will replace the incumbent president, Klaus Iohannis, whose second and last presidential mandate to which the Constitution entitled him to, expires next month.
As regards Parliament, there are 330 deputy and 136 senator positions at stake, for which thousands of people are competing. About 200 envelopes with postal votes for the parliamentary and presidential elections have already been received and are “on hold” until the moment when the votes cast at the ballot boxes will be counted, the president of the Permanent Election Authority (AEP), Toni Grebla, explained. He added that 6,650 citizens received envelopes to vote by mail and they must send their option no later than two days before the start of physical voting, in order to be received on time. If they report having voted incorrectly by mail, they can cast their vote at the nearest polling station in their country of residence.
Toni Grebla, alongside the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luminiţa Odobescu, held a press conference on the topic of elections abroad. Greblă recalled that Romania has a record number of polling stations set up for the Romanian Diaspora, 950. Minister Odobescu warned that there are 11 polling stations with different addresses in the three rounds of elections, in Finland, France, Spain and Britain. She also mentioned that the address of some polling stations in Spain has changed, due to the recent catastrophic floods there.
Odobescu has called on the Romanian citizens abroad to check the list of polling stations and to carry with them the documents they need in order to be allowed to vote – an identity card or passport, valid on the day of voting. All polling stations abroad will be permanently video monitored, the minister also said. The distribution of the ballot papers for the first round of the presidential and parliamentary elections, as well as of the other materials, such as control stamps, stamps with the mention ‘VOTE’ and the minutes recording the voting results, ends this week. Voting abroad in the first round of the presidential elections will unfold over three days: Friday, November 22, between 12 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time, Saturday, November 23, and Sunday, November 24, between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. local time.
