Moldovan Central Electoral Commission: about 1 million 150,000 people vote today's ballot

Chisinau, 5 November /MOLDPRES/ - The Central Electoral Commission informed that about 1 million 150,000 voters had participated in the today’s local elections, which represents over 41.4 per cent out of all the number of  voters registered in the electoral lists.      

The president of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), Angelica Caraman, at a news briefing, said that all polling stations had closed at 21:00. At the same time, a voter turnout under 25 per cent was recorded in 8 out of those 898 settlements of Moldova.

According to the Electoral Code, the elections can be regarded as valid, if not less than one fourth of all people registered in the electoral lists participated in the voting. If the polls are declared invalid in certain constituencies or polling stations, the Central Electoral Commission instructs the organization, in two weeks, of repeated voting based on the same data from the electoral lists, with the same candidacies and the same electoral councils and bureaus.    

At the same time, the electoral legislation stipulates that the candidate for the office of mayor is regarded as elected, if he/she got more than a half of the validly expressed votes of the electors who participated in the ballot.

If none of the candidates gets more than a half of the validly expressed votes, in a two-week period, the runoff election is held with two candidates who picked up the largest number of votes in the first round of the ballot. The names of these two candidates are put down in the descending order of the number of votes grabbed in the first round of voting. If more candidates got the equal number of votes, the constituency electoral council makes drawing of lots, recording the concerned fact in an official report.   

The citizens with right to vote today were expected at those 1,578 polling stations, in order to elect their mayors and councilors. As a result of the local elections, 898 mayors and 11,058 local councilors are to be elected. Over 3,900 people willing to hold the position of mayor and more than 56,000 citizens who want to become councilors ran for these offices.    

The last general local elections took place on 20 October 2019. The mandate of the local authorities is of four years.