The Coalition for Free and Fair Elections made a public call to the Central Election Commission (CEC) to enable the Moldovan citizens to vote with expired identification papers. In a news conference at IPN, the Coalition’s secretary Polina Panaite said that during three consecutive elections the last few years, the Moldovans abroad could vote with the expired passport.

According to Polina Panaite, the number of Moldovans abroad who have expired passports increases constantly. In 2016, the figure stood at over 400,000, almost twice higher than in 2014. A decision by the Supreme Court of Justice of 2014 says voting with expired documents is legal.

Asked by the ombudsman to examine the issue, the Constitutional Court on January 14 this year decided the fact that the citizens abroad can vote only with the valid passport or soldier’s permit does not represent differentiated treatment. Nadejda Hriptievski, a jurist of the Legal Resources Center of Moldova, said the Court analyzed superficially the ombudsman’s application. The ombudsman asked the Court to also examine the article that stipulates the list of documents needed for voting and to say if this article clearly provides that the identification papers should be mandatorily valid. The Court responded only that voting based on expired papers can lead to election rigging by multiple voting and the state can therefore limit the people’s right to vote.

According to Nadejda Hriptievski, the Court’s arguments concerning election rigging are not conclusive as voting with expired passports was allowed at the previous elections and there were no cases of multiple voting with expired documents. The role of the identification papers, either the identity card or the passport, is to identify the person and the expired papers allow doing this as they contain the identification number and the holder’s photo. When the information system State Register of Voters is launched, multiple voting is impossible. If someone voted, the information system shows the right to vote was exercised.

The jurist noted the permission to vote with expired documents is needed as the Republic of Moldova, through its consular offices and embassies, does not have technical and human capacitates to issue passports to all the citizens abroad whose papers expired.