The Constitutional Court rejected as inadmissible the complaints about the establishment of the constitutionality of the law on the partial implementation of postal voting. The complaints were submitted by MPs of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists and MPs affiliated to fugitive Ilan Shor, IPN reports.
The authors of the two complaints challenge the law on the partial implementation of postal voting, mainly stating that the principle according to which the fundamental elements of the electoral law should not be amended earlier than one year before the elections was violated.
Also, the authors claimed that the citizens of the Republic of Moldova with the right to vote from the few states in which the law will be implemented will be advantaged over their fellow citizens from other states with large areas or where many Moldovan citizens eligible to vote live, where postal voting should also be applied. The authors also noted that the Cabinet’s approval for the bill that was the basis of the challenged law is missing, but the implementation of the law involves budgetary expenditures.
The Constitutional Court held that by instituting the procedure for the right to vote by mail, there is imposed no restriction of the exercise of the right to vote. On the contrary, the voting methods are diversified. One cannot speak of the existence of interference in the right to vote. Also, an analysis cannot be started on the basis of Article 16 of the Constitution, which can be applied only when the applicability of a substantial fundamental right is demonstrated.
“The authors of the complaint claim that the challenged law does not ensure the secrecy of postal voting, given that there is no monitoring or guarantee of the observance of the secrecy of the vote expressed in this way. With reference to this aspect, the Venice Commission in its Opinion noted that states are obliged to ensure compliance with the principle of secret ballot. It is an inherent challenge for postal voting, as well as for other remote voting methods, such as internet voting,” said the Court.
The Court’s decision is final, cannot be appealed, enters into force on the date of adoption and is published in the Official Gazette. Judges Sergei Turcan and Vladimir Turcan formulated separate opinions on this decision, which have not yet been published.
