The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) has finalized, on Tuesday, the list of polling stations established abroad for the upcoming presidential election, with 294 such polling stations following to be prepared for Romanian citizens outside the country borders who wish to exercise their right to vote on this occasion, a press release remitted to AGERPRES by MAE informs.
The polling stations will be placed at the headquarters of the diplomatic and consular missions of Romania, the headquarters of the Romanian Cultural Institutes (ICR) abroad, in the theatres of operations in Afghanistan, as well as other locations that permit the good conduct, “correctness and neutrality”, of the voting process.
According to the release, the final list of polling stations was approved based on prior experiences in organising presidential elections abroad, the election of 2009 being taken as a reference, with a number of 294 polling stations available abroad back then.
“We must remind that in the elections for the Presidency of Romania of 2009, abroad, in the second round of voting, nearly 146,000 Romanian citizens voted in 294 voting polls, the highest number ever of Romanian citizens voting abroad in an election having been recorded that year”, the source mentions.
In determining the location of the polling stations the focus was placed on a wider coverage of areas in which Romanian citizens live in different states around the globe, but also ‘ensuring adequate representation, proportionality, correctness and neutrality in the polling stations”.
“For the elections of November 2014 the number of polling stations in the Republic of Moldova was significantly increased, from 13 up to 21, considering the ascending trend regarding the number of Romanian citizens that hold a right to vote in the neighboring state. In Spain the number of polling stations remained the same, namely 38. In the case of Italy, as well, the number of polling stations remained similar to the level of 2009”, MAE shows.
In what regards the United States, the same source mentions, focus was placed on ensuring a number of polling stations at a level similar to that of 2009 by identifying those places that ensure the premises for a fair vote.
“In Great Britain, the increasing number of Romanian citizens following the liberalisation of Romanian citizens’ circulation in the EU, and implicitly in this country, determined an increase in the number of polling stations”, MAE adds.
The list of all the polling stations, as well as other useful information regarding the organization of the elections abroad are available on the MAE website, where a special section dedicated to the presidential elections of 2014 was opened. AGERPRES