Ballot papers will be over 50 cm long

The Central Election Commission (CEC) approved the model of the ballots for the April 5 legislative elections. They will be white and have a length of over a meter (54.5 cm) and a width of 14 cm, Info-Prim Neo reports. For the first time at this year’s elections, every electoral office will have a certain number of ballots each. The number of the constituency will be written on the left side of the ballot, while the number of the poling place – on the right side. Twenty-one election runners will be written in quadrilaterals, in the order decided by draw. The sign and symbol of the runner will be imprinted on the left side of the quadrilateral. The name of the party, social-political movement and independent candidate will be written in capitals in the center. The voter will put the “Voted” stamp in a circle located on the right side of the quadrilateral. The model of the ballot papers aroused the dissatisfaction of a number of CEC members and representatives of the political parties to the Commission. They said that it is not esthetic to write the name of the election contender in capital letters as the electoral symbol looks smaller and insignificant. For his part, the CEC secretary Iurie Ciocan said that this way all the runners will be in equal conditions. The fact that the Ministry of Justice registered the names of some of the parties with the phrase ‘political party’ in front, which is the organizational legal form of the party, also aroused dissatisfaction. According to the CEC secretary, the first lot of ballots consisting of 1.074 million units will be published starting with next week. In the end, the CEC approved the decision on the ballot’s model by 6 votes to 3 despite the dissatisfaction expressed by representatives of the parties. The decision was made on Friday, March 20.