Voters in Balti municipality will go to the polls tomorrow to elect their mayor in the second round of a snap election. Polling stations will open at 07:00 and will remain so until 21:00. Voters will choose between independent candidate Nikolai Grigorishin and Nicolae Chirilciuc, of the Patriots of Moldova Party.
102,105 ballot papers were printed for this round, including 51,988 in Romanian and 50,117 in Russian. Voters are asked to bring their own pens, not to forget their ID cards and accompanying booklet, and to mask up.
Voting will take place under similar procedures as in the first round and based on the same electoral roll. Those who turned 18 in between the first round and the runoff will be able to vote after being registered on supplementary lists. Those who changed their domicile or actual residence in this time span will have to cast their ballots at the polling stations to which they went in the first round.
Those who requested to vote at home using a mobile ballot box in the first round don’t need to repeat their request in the second round.
Likewise, the accreditation of electoral observers for the first round extends for the second one as well.
The electoral authorities remind voters and candidates that organized transportation to polling stations is against the law unless voters pay for this service.
Campaigning on election day is also against the law.
Initially slated for December 5, the runoff in Balti was suspended after the winner of the first round, Shor Party’s Marina Tauber, was eliminated from the race over campaign financing violations, less than an hour before polling stations were due to open. Second-placed Grigorishin is now facing fifth-placed Chirilciuc in the runoff, after the candidates who came in third and fourth bowed out.
