The pilot project to implement postal voting was intentionally developed to allow the October 20 presidential election to be rigged in favor of an election candidate, said Tudor Șoilița, a blogger who decided to conduct a personal investigation into “how the vote will be ensured and what the procedures for sending these envelopes with citizens’ votes consist of”. For the purpose, he went to Sweden, which is one of the countries where postal voting will be implemented.
In a press conference hosted by IPN, Tudor Șoilița said that the government approved and promulgated this draft law without waiting for the recommendations of the Venice Commission. And here, according to him, a question arises: “Does postal voting represent care for the citizens or it will permit election rigging?” To get more responses, as a blogger with a declared audience of over one million followers, he went to the CEC to receive information about how this pilot project will work.
“Mr. Pavel Postica (CEC vice-president, e.n.) assured that postal voting would be very well secured and that it would not be possible to falsify the votes. I thus asked: if the CEC will know the person who votes and how they vote and if the Venice Commission will come up with recommendations, how will these be applied? Pavel Postica explained that the ballot will be secret and the CEC will not know who votes and whom they vote for. He stated that the people who want to vote by mail must register online in advance on the Commission’s website so that the CEC knows to which addresses these ballots should be sent and how many people will be on that address because, in the first round, by two envelopes will be sent – one with the ballot paper and an empty envelope for the second round, if this will take place. If there will be runoffs, the citizens from the countries where voting by mail is allowed will be able to go on their own to print this ballot,” said the activist.
According to him, this raises many questions about the credibility and safety of these votes. That’s why he decided to travel to Sweden to see how postal services work there. In Stockholm, he found a post office. “I took out five ballots. As I only know Moldovan and Russian, I used the online translator. I explained to the post office worker that I’m from Moldova and I came to their country for a short time and I want to send some letters to Moldova, but I don’t have a permanent address in Sweden and if I can use their postal address to receive an answer to this letter. I asked them to print five ballots for me. I purchased five envelopes and, as a proof, I sent five letters to the Central Election Commission, in the names of Mr. Igor Grosu, Dorin Recean, Maia Sandu, Vasile Grădinaru, author of this law, and CEC head Angelica Caraman,” related the blogger.
“And what do you think, what else did I find out? That’s right, I learned how you can get an address where you can receive letters coming in your name in another country, if you don’t have a permanent residence. If you hold a Romanian passport, you can rent a mailbox for an indefinite period of time, provided you pay from the start. And if you rented this mailbox, you can freely register this application with the CEC to participate in postal voting. The ballots will come to your address where this mailbox is located. This proves once again that there is no control over how the presidential election will take place in autumn. After the investigation I conducted, I have great concerns. This proved once again that the pilot project is implemented specifically to give the possibility to rig the election in favor of an election contender,” said Tudor Șoilița.
Note: IPN Agency offers the right of reply to persons who consider themselves targeted in the news made from the statements of the organizers of this press conference, including by facilitating the organization of another press conference under similar conditions.
