Romanians living abroad to have three days to vote at presidential elections

A special joint committee of the Romanian Parliament’s two chambers decided on Thursday, June 27, that the Romanians living abroad will have three days to vote at the presidential elections to be organized later this year. The voting process in the diaspora will thus be a weekend-long one, being organized on the days of Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

On Friday, the voting will start at 12:00 and will end at 21:00 local time, on Saturday the process will start at 07:00 and will end at 21:00 local time, while on Sunday the polls will open at 07:00 and will close at 21:00, according to the report adopted by the committee, local Digi24.ro reported.

The members of the committee also decided that the voters who are at the polling stations, as well as those still waiting in line at 21:00 when the polls close in the diaspora will be able to continue exercising the right to vote until 23.59.

On Wednesday, the committee decided to introduce the vote by mail and early voting at the presidential elections.

These measures are to be taken in an attempt to avoid the major problems that appeared at the May 26 elections for the European Parliament, when the Romanians living abroad had to wait many hours in endless queues to vote. However, many didn’t manage to vote anyway and this led to anger and even incidents at some polling stations.

While the president and the opposition blame the government for the poor organization of the EU elections abroad, the Foreign Affairs Ministry blamed president Klaus Iohannis, electoral tourism and the low Internet speed in some cases for this situation.

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