"It is (on the agenda — editor’s note) the Government decision on the date too (of the presidential elections — editor’s note): November 2 and 16— the presidential elections", the prime minister said quoted by Agerpres.
The prime minister added that Thursday the Ordinance amending the law on the election of the president of Romania will be debated. The draft Ordinance discussed Thursday in the government meeting provides that with the abolition of the special polling stations, there should be a regulation passed to allow the possibility of voting at any polling station for the voters who on the elections day travel to municipality or to city other than their residence.
According to Mediafax, the Government, by passing an Emergency Government decision to amend the Law no. 370/2004 for the election of the president of Romania, should extend the deadline by which the Government has to schedule the elections date from 45 days to 60 days before the elections day, in order to ensure the proper fulfillment of all elections procedures provided by the law.
The current dispositions of the Law no. 370/2004, republished with the subsequent amendments and supplementations provide for the organization of special polling stations, normally in the train and bus stations and university campuses.
“From the previous experience of organizing elections, we found that there were situation when hundreds of polling stations in big cities and in the tourist areas were extremely crowded, and in another thousands of such sections, set up in small rural areas, the voters flow was very low ”, the Government’s note reads.
The government justifies the removal from the law of the special polling stations provision citing the impossibility of estimating the number of voters who will come to vote, which in turn causes difficulties in estimating correctly the number of ballots to be distributed to each special polling stations.