Parliament reduces election threshold for local elections

Local elections will not be considered valid if less than a quarter of persons having the right to vote, compared with one third as the legislation in force was previously stipulating, will participate in elections. The Parliament approved these amendments in final reading on Thursday, July 13. In light of the new 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 in the elections. At the same time the provision that stipulated applying the “voted” stamp on the identity card was canceled. The proposal of applying this stamp on a “electoral blank” was not supported by the majority of MPs. 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 the right to inform the local public administration 45 days before elections. 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 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. At the same time, the authors’ proposal of introducing in the ballot an “against everyone” section was rejected. On the whole, 63 articles of the Electoral Code were amended. 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).