The persons with visual disabilities will be able to vote individually with the assistance of a ballot template in the February 24 elections. Rodica Sîrbu, head of the communication division of the Central Election Commission, has told IPN that there were printed 2,300 ballot templates that will be distributed to all the polling places. The envelopes will be of two types, for the parliamentary elections and for the consultative referendum.
This way, the same types of template will be used for both of the ballots intended for the parliamentary elections as both of the ballots have the same width and dimension of the rectangle where the electoral contender is written and of the circle where the stamp “voted” is applied.
The ballot template is an instrument that enables the persons with visual impairments to vote unassisted. On this, the name of order of the election contestant is written in Braille and the voter can find the contender this wants to vote for by palpation.
The persons with visual impartments will be informed by members of the electoral office of the polling place about the possibility of voting with the template. After voting, the ballot template is taken out of the envelope, is folded and is put in the ballot box. The envelope should be given back to the commission of the polling place.
Voting with ballot templates was first tested in the early parliamentary elections of 2010 at one polling place. Later, in the parliamentary elections of 2014, this voting method was applied at all the polling places.
