KOSICE, October 28, (WEBNOVINY) — Buying of votes is the biggest problem and the most frequent cause of declaring regional elections in some municipalities invalid. Other reasons include presence of an unauthorized person at the vote count and manipulation with ballots, according to an analysis of the Constitutional Court, which its President Ivetta Macejkova presented at Thursday’s expert meeting with politicians, and representatives of the Slovak Association of Towns and Village (ZMOS) and the Slovak Union of Cities on the occasion of the upcoming regional elections that will be held at the end of next month.
Between January 1, 1993 and June 30, 2010, the Constitutional Court registered 332 complaints concerning regional elections, while in 2006 alone their number was 137. The Constitutional Court canceled the elections in 18 municipalities during this period. Macejkova further informed that the objective of the meeting was to evaluate the decision-making of the court related to the elections, with focus on mistakes that resulted in declaring the elections invalid. The analysis confirmed that buying of votes is the major problem, the court’s president said.
The Slovak Association of Towns and Villages will distribute the result of the analysis and the expert debate to all towns and villages before the elections and point out concrete shortcomings in the elections.
By the end of next year, a new election code for all types of elections should be prepared and debated in Parliament, reported Interior Ministry’s State Secretary Maros Zilinka. A new set of rules will apply to all elections, namely parliamentary, presidential, regional elections, and elections to the European Parliament. He called on the public to report instances of buying votes to the police.
SITA