The most often electoral frauds met in the Republic of Moldova and the neighboring states include the entrance of the voting booth with cameras or mobile phones in order to photograph the vote, the distribution of more ballots than necessary and the entrance of the polling booth with an already stamped ballot. The Forum for Transparency, Involvement, Unity and Change (FORTIUS) presented an analysis of the most frequent frauds and violations committed before the election campaign, during it and on the election day, IPN reports.
FORTIUS expert Alexandru Litvinenko said that on the election day the members of the electoral office can hand over several ballots to voters who they know, signing instead of persons who are not expected to vote. When the votes are counted, particular ballots are divided between electoral competitors who have observers in electoral offices.
As to the frauds committed before the election period, the expert noted that the election runners unusually offer presents and do favors to public institutions and people, provide free meals for the population, stage concerts and infrastructure development activities in order to persuade the people to vote for them. The fact that the media outlets favor particular election contenders and present other candidates in an unfavorable light is also considered a fraud.
Executive director of the Association for Participatory Democratic Igor Botan called on the electoral competitors to instruct their candidates as to the identification and declaring of electoral fraud intentions. “We must combine forces to prevent vote rigging,” he stated.
Programs director of “Promo-Lex” Association Alexandru Postica said that most of the electoral frauds are committed before the election day. He called upon the election runners to submit complaints about vote rigging, not only to make political declarations about them. “If we compare the number of political statements about the commission of violations and frauds and the number of complaints, we surely determine that the number of complaints is much lower, of only several percentage points,” said the expert.
The presidential elections will take place on October 30, 2016.
