DS Files Criminal Complaint over Incomplete Election Envelopes

DS Files Criminal Complaint over Incomplete Election Envelopes

Bratislava, January 24 (TASR) – The Democratic Party (DS) is filing a criminal complaint, stating that the preparation and course of the general election has been marred because people who applied to vote from abroad have received incomplete post.

If municipal offices and the Interior Ministry fail to send ballot papers once again and on time, the party will call for a new election day to be announced, said DS representative Natalia Blahova. “We ask the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic for its opinion concerning the validity of the general election that is already taking place from abroad. If voters who have already voted from abroad via mail were limited in their choice of political parties, we demand that the whole election should be declared invalid by the Constitutional Court,” Blahova told a news conference on Friday.

The opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party believes that if the problems with ballot papers persist, Interior Minister Denisa Sakova (Smer-SD) should resign from her post. The party said that there would have been fewer problems if legislative changes had been introduced to simplify voting from abroad.

The Interior Ministry said it has registered only four complaints regarding incomplete post from a total number of 55,141 envelopes containing ballot papers sent. “The human factor failed in all cases. Sets of election materials are put into envelopes by employees of municipal offices,” Lucia Kirinovicova of the Interior Minister’s Office press department told TASR on Friday.

If they obtain incomplete letters, voters should immediately contact the sender, i.e. the municipality in question or the ministry. “We recommend that they send a copy of an email asking for a new set of ballot papers to the address volby@minv.sk as well,” said Kirinovicova.

The general election in Slovakia is slated for February 29. Twenty-five political parties are running in the election.