Delphi The citizen sent the following letter to the editorial office.
“I just spent more than 60 minutes trying to vote in Kaunas. They didn’t find my personal code or passport, the staff couldn’t contact the CEC. There is one CEC employee throughout Lithuania for assistance with citizens registered abroad.
When 60 minutes later that CEC employee called Kaunas back, it turned out that everything was fine with my passport and I was still a citizen.
The problem is that steps 1 and 2 of the system instructions sent to the CEC for voting by citizens registered abroad are incorrect. I saw with my own eyes that the first step in the instructions was to find a citizen by personal identification number in the system, when the CEC advised by phone to simply skip that point and immediately go to the third step and enter a new voter. False inspections have been submitted to the whole of Lithuania,” the resident testified.
“It’s a good thing I waited, even though it was unpleasant to have everyone watching. Probably, not a single person will remain without voting if the CEC does not correct the instructions of its system”, she thought.
CEC: the Kaunas Election Commission was contacted
Delphi appealed to the CEC with questions both about the citizen’s mention of one CEC employee who should help with citizens registered abroad, and about the allegedly erroneously written instructions.
Press representative Indrė Ramanavičienė on behalf of the CEC regretted the situation faced by a citizen who wanted to vote in Kaunas. According to her, the election commission of the Kaunas municipality was repeatedly reminded how the voting of voters living abroad should be administered.
“We sincerely regret that you, as a voter, had to wait to vote, – in response to the citizen Delphi addressed I. Ramanavičienė. – We checked your situation. During the preliminary voting, the member of the election commission must check the necessary information according to the personal code of the voter who came to vote: whether the voter has the right to participate in the election, in which precinct in Lithuania or abroad he is registered, etc. We deeply regret that at this stage, in the first hours of early voting, this procedure took time and we had to wait.”
“Only after learning about this case was the Kaunas Municipality Election Commission contacted and they were repeatedly reminded how to administer the voting of voters who have declared their place of residence abroad,” noted the CEC representative.
Early voting is underway
Early voting in the presidential election and the referendum on the preservation of citizenship began on Tuesday, and will continue until Thursday.
Until Thursday evening, voters will be able to vote in all 60 municipalities from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., regardless of where they have declared their place of residence.
The main day for the presidential election and the referendum on the preservation of citizenship is Sunday. On that day, the doors of the polling station will also open at 7 a.m. and wait for voters until 8 p.m.
On that day, it will be possible to vote in any polling station, a total of 1,895 places throughout Lithuania.
