BRATISLAVA, January 23, (WEBNOVINY) — Of all Slovak citizens currently living abroad without permanent residence in Slovakia, only 728 requested the possibility to vote by mail in March 2012 early elections. People without permanent residence had to request permission to vote by mail until January 20 at the Bratislava-Petrzalka Municipal Council, as the district of Petrzalka has a special election precinct for Slovak citizens with permanent residence in other countries. As Petrzalka District Council’s Denisa Paulenova informed, it was important that requests to vote by mail were delivered until Friday or, if they’re sent via e-mail, until Friday midnight. Requests delivered later will not be accepted.
The election precinct for voters with permanent residence in other countries who vote by mail operates in a special regime, without any voters physically voting in it. On the day of the election, March 10, 2012, its election committee will start opening received postal envelopes at 20.00 CET. Envelopes with ballots, which will be retrieved in this way, will be opened after 22.00 CET and then counted in the same way as in remaining approximately 6,000 precincts across Slovakia.
Paulenova further informed that requests had to contain a declaration of honor stating that the voter does not have permanent residence in Slovak Republic, a copy of their passport or a copy of citizenship certificate. Most of the delivered requests came traditionally from the Czech Republic, United States, Canada and from various European countries.
In 2006, when voting by mail was made possible for the first time, Petrzalka Municipal Council registered 641 requests for voting via post; their number dropped to 570 in 2010. Altogether 3,427 voters voted via post in the 2006 election and 5,861 in 2010, casting 0.22 percent of all votes. The problem remains that it is impossible to vote for voters who don’t know they’ll be abroad on the day of the election before the deadline for submitting requests for voting via post. The early elections will take place on March 10, 2012 with 26 political parties participating.
SITA
