To ensure voting and vote counting, the electoral districts are divided into polling places that are constituted by district electoral councils in settlements, based on the proposals submitted by mayors of towns or municipalities, sectors and villages at least 35 days before the election day, and cover each at least 30 and at most 3,000 voters.
The polling places are usually established in publicly owned buildings so as to facilitate the access to them of persons with disabilities and elderly people. Special polling places can be set up near hospitals, maternity hospitals, sanatoriums and old people’s homes. Abroad, the polling places are housed by Moldova’s embassies and consular offices.
The electoral offices of polling places are set up by district electoral councils at least 25 days before the election day and consist of at least five or at most 11 members, with the number of members being odd.
The electoral office of the polling place keeps the electoral registers, ensures their integrity and the integrity of ballots, examines applications concerning inaccuracies in electoral rolls, makes the necessary changes in these and issues right to vote certificates to voters who will not be at the place of domicile on the election day. These also ensure the access of voters, observers and electoral competitors to the State Register of Voter and the electoral registers.
The members of the electoral office compile the additional electoral rolls, adding to them persons who vote based on the right to vote certificates and those who, for particular reasons, weren’t included in the main electoral registers. These inform the people who live on the territory of the polling place about the date and place of voting and prepare the polling place for the voting process by setting up polling booths and ballot boxes and take measures to maintain order at the polling place on the voting day.
All the members of the electoral office deal with the vote count at the polling place. They draw up proceedings and reports and submit them to the district electoral council together with the ballots. They also examine applications and challenges regarding the organization and holding of elections, taking decisions over them and attaching copies of these decisions to the office’s report. The task of the electoral office is to remit the data about voter turnout and the data needed for totaling up the preliminary election results to the district electoral council.
A number of 2,081 polling places will be established for the October 30 presidential elections, 100 of which outside Moldova’s borders.
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The IPN series “I want to know ABOUT ELECTIONS” is designed to explain notions, terms and practices related to the presidential election process.
