Parliament reduces election threshold for local elections

Local elections will not be considered valid if less than a quarter of the persons having the right to vote, compared with one third as the legislation in force was previously stipulating will participate to elections. The Parliament approved these amendments in first reading on Thursday, July 13. According to the amendments, the repeated round will be considered valid regardless of the number of voters that will participate in elections. At present, in order to validate the elections also one third of voters had to participate to the elections. According to another essential amendment, a new element was introduced, “electoral blank” were the stamp “voted” will be applied both when participating in local and general elections. Starting March 2005, the mentioned above stamp was applied on the identity cards, fact that according to the authors generated disproval of some categories of electors who did not come to elections. As well, the new notion – “residence declaration” was introduced. The citizens who have the right to vote and will change their residence to other localities of Moldova will have to inform the local public administration two months before elections. This stipulation could be changed due to several proposals of the MPs. The draft law stipulates also changing the ballot, by excluding the removable coupon, which according to the authors requires supplementary financial expenses and its relevance is small. The amendments also stipulate that in case when the parties and other social-political organizations do not announce their candidates for the electoral councils or bureaus within 5 days until the term for their creation expires, the necessary number of members will be completed by the local Council. On the whole, 63 articles of the Electoral Code were amended. The speaker of the Parliament Marian Lupu solicited to submit the project for the second reading by the end of this month. The draft law was elaborated by a group of Communist, Democrat and Christian-Democrat MPs, in collaboration with the Association for Participative Democracy ADEPT and the Central Electoral Commission (CEC). Renata Lapti, the deputy chairman of CEC, has told reporters that the amendments are necessary in order to improve legislation and the electoral system of the Republic of Moldova.