Approximately 314 thousand voters have participated in the second round of the general local election, which means a turnout of over 36.7% of the total number of citizens with the right to vote expected at the polls today.
According to the provisions of the Electoral Code, the second round of elections will be declared invalid if the number of participants is less than 1/5 of the number of persons registered in electoral lists. According to preliminary data, each of the 273 localities where the second round of election took place today registered a turnout of over 20%.
Also today, re-election for local councils took place in 8 localities and re-election for mayor's offices took place in 6 localities of the country. The electoral law states that a re-election is considered valid regardless of the number of voters who participated in the ballot.
Eventually, data from the minutes prepared by electoral commissions of polling stations will be entered into the information system and then preliminary results of the general local election can be published.
Please be reminded that the candidate who obtains most votes in the second round of election will be considered elected. In case of a tie, the candidate who obtained most votes in the first round will be considered elected. If both candidates received the same number of votes in the first round as well, the constituency electoral commission shall draw lots. And in the case of localities with a single candidate, the candidate will be considered elected if he/she gathered at least half of the votes cast by the voters who participated in the election.
According to latest information submitted by the General Police Inspectorate, 140 cases of violations or incidents were registered before the closure of polling stations. These include:
- 26 cases of banned campaigning;
- 45 cases of organized transportation of voters;
- 5 cases of reasonable suspicion of voter corruption;
- 27 cases of making pictures of ballot papers; and
- another 37 incidents regarding violations of the election process.
All cases are being examined by the General Police Inspectorate.
Please note that all the information is preliminary until the original documents have been submitted by lower-level electoral bodies.