In the elections to the Riga City Council on 29 August, voters will have the opportunity to vote in any polling station, not only in the list of which the voter was initially registered. This is provided by the amendments to the Law on Dissolution of the Riga City Council adopted by the Saeima in the final reading on Thursday, 18 June.
Voters will be able to use the possibility to vote at another polling station both on early voting days and on the day of elections. To ensure this possibility, polling stations will exchange the voter’s data online and make sure the voter hasn't already voted at his/her initially allocated polling station. Then the voter from his/her polling station's voter list will be transferred to the new polling station's voter list and will be allowed to vote.
Taking into account the experience of the European Parliament elections, the amendments also provide for a solution, if for technical reasons it would not be possible to exchange data between polling stations. In this situation, voters will not be sent away from the station, but they will have the opportunity to vote using a registration envelope. When the system operation is restored, the voters voted in such a way will also be registered on the electronic voter list, and if the system shows that the voter has already voted in another station, the ballot in the registration envelope will be deleted and not counted.
In the opinion of the Central Election Commission (CEC), the possibility of voting at any polling station will not only facilitate participation in elections for voters whose actual and declared place of residence is located in different districts of Riga, but could also be used in a crisis situation, if a polling station had to be closed in the election week, because of an employee of the electoral commission has contracted Covid-19 infection, therefore other commission members must self-isolate.
At the same time, the amendments supported by the Saeima also provide for an eight-hour extension of the working time of polling stations on early voting days. Polling stations will be open on Wednesday from 16:00 to 21:00, on Thursday from 9:00 to 16:00 and on Friday from 12:00 to 20:00.
The longer working time of polling stations on the early voting days in the context of the Covid-19 virus will avoid crowding at polling stations, and allow more vulnerable voters – older people, voters with chronic diseases – to vote in times of low attendance.
The amendments also provide that polling stations' commissions can organise voting at home not only on the election day, but also on the early voting days.
If a voter will not be able to attend the polling station due to health reasons, it will be possible to apply for voting at the voter’s place of residence. In this case, the voter or his/her confidant must submit an application to the Riga City Election Commission by post, e-mail or on the portal Latvija.lv.
Similarly, it will be possible to change the initially allocated polling station by sending an application both electronically and by post to an authority for residence declaration of the Riga City. The possibility of changing the polling station voters may use until the fourteenth day before the elections.
The funding needed to implement the amendments amounts to EUR 30,075, which is the necessary costs for adapting and operating of the electronic data exchange application. The necessary funding will be provided from the budget of Riga municipality.
18.06.2020
CEC Information Department