Election commission to propose scrapping registration envelopes

Latvia’s Central Election Commission plans to propose ending the use of election registration envelopes to speed up vote counting at the next parliamentary election, LSM reported. Commission head Māris Zviedris said he would put forward changes by the end of this year.

Vote counting was delayed this year after more voters than before used the option to submit a ballot for safekeeping and later change it. The number who changed their vote rose nearly sevenfold compared with the previous parliamentary election. Under current rules, ballots submitted for safekeeping and later replaced are destroyed.

Zviedris said 744 voters changed their minds this year, compared with 139 in the 2022 election. Some voters changed their vote as many as three times.

Polling stations closed at 8 p.m., but many staff had to wait until around midnight to begin counting. Election procedures required officials to first identify, across all polling stations, the ballots of voters who had voted more than once. In Ādaži municipality, staff received permission to start counting at about 12:30 a.m.

Agita Berkmane, head of the Ādaži municipal election commission, said the count took until about 10:30 the following morning. She said the main delay was reconciling the ballots cast with the records of voters who had submitted ballots for safekeeping.

The Central Election Commission said it decided at an extraordinary meeting at 10 p.m. to begin the count, but it is not yet known why the instruction reached polling stations only after midnight.