The often intuitional changes in the electoral sphere do not contribute to the stability of the system or to the population’s greater confidence in transparency and efficiency of the electoral process. The lawmakers should avoid making often changes to the electoral legislation. Such suggestions were formulated by the president of the Association of Sociologists and Demographers Victor Mocanu when presenting a sociological study of the influence of institutional changes on the citizens’ electoral behavior, IPN reports.
The study shows the level of satisfaction with the electoral process is directly proportional to electoral activism. The active voters are rather against holding elections during two or several days. They consider such elections are much more costly and involve additional rigging possibilities.
Asked if they would like to use modern information technology in the electoral process, such as the electronic voting machine or electronic voting, the very active voters said more often that they would not like to use such technologies. However, the active persons and the less active persons are more in favor of such technologies. The sociologists also noticed that the very active voters mostly oppose the possibility of voting at any polling place in the country. The very active voters are also against the initiative to reduce the number of MPs and these consider a law should be adopted to oblige the MPs who leave the parliamentary group to renounce their seat.
According to the president of the Association of Sociologists and Demographers Victor Mocanu, when the electoral system is reviewed, the reforms need time to reach the local public administration from the central one. Time is also needed to inform the citizens about the new voting mechanism and to explain the way in which the new electoral process will contribute to creating a representative legislative body. A stable electoral system would offer more confidence to political contestants as the often revisions before the elections do not enable the parties and candidates to prepare the electoral strategies and party bodies and to compete efficiently.
The same study shows that if elections were held next Sunday, 49.6% of the decided respondents would vote for the Party of Socialists, 19.5% for the Democratic Party, while 16.1% for the electoral bloc ACUM Platform DA and PAS. Igor Dodon, Maia Sandu and Zinaida Grecheanyi are the personalities who enjoy the biggest trust. If a referendum on Moldova’s entry into the NATO was held next Sunday, only 22% of those polled would vote in favor, while 63% would vote against. 7% would not take part in the ballot. Respondents’ options concerning the integration into the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union divided as follows: 41% for the EU and 43% for the EEU. 7% would not take part in the vote.
The poll was carried out during February 1-14 and covered 1,195 respondents from 83 localities, except for the Transnistrian region. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.0%.
