The preparations for the snap parliamentary elections entered the final phase. The Central Election Commission (CEC) adopted the most important documents, deciding: the total number of citizens who are eligible to vote, the number of polling stations where the citizens from the Diaspora will vote, the number of polling stations and the settlements that are under the control of the constitutional authorities where citizens residing in Transnistria can vote. For the elections to be validated, the voter turnout should be higher than 1/3 of the electors put on the voter rolls.
Given the pandemic crisis, especially the fast spread of the Delta variant, it is important to make sure that anti-epidemic measures are taken to secure the electoral process and to ensure a high voter turnout. On June 3, the National Extraordinary Public Health Commission adopted an Instruction to this effect.
The current pandemic situation ahead of the snap parliamentary elections of July 11 is much better than that ahead of the presidential elections of November 2020. This June, the daily average of COVID-19 infections is of about 50 persons, with over 40% of the cases being recorded in the Transnistrian region, while the number of daily infections ahead of the presidential elections, in October e 2020, was approximately 700.
The figure below shows that during the campaign prior to the presidential elections, but especially after it, in November and October 2020, the number of infections with COVID-19 rose suddenly. It is expected that the number of infections after the parliamentary elections will also rise. That’s why, so as to better manage the parliamentary electoral process and to appropriately implement the anti-epidemic measures, the district electoral councils should take into account the location of hotbeds, which is not at all uniform. Special attention should be devoted to the 41 polling stations established for the citizens living in Transnistria, where the infection rate in June was about four times higher than on the territory controlled by the constitutional authorities.
Also, district electoral council No.38, which is responsible for the elections outside the country, should take into account the fact that the epidemiological situation in the 36 countries where polling stations will be set up for Moldovan voters is very different and does not proportionally depend on the level of vaccination of the population in these countries.
The figure below confirms that the coronavirus R number in the countries in which Moldovans are to vote poorly correlates with the vaccination rate in these countries.
The main conclusion that can be drawn based on these statistics is that it is very important to take appropriate protection measures. However, there where the risks of infection are higher, the given measures should be corresponding.
