Csaba Tiberiu Kovacs
Secretary General of the Romanian Permanent Electoral Authority
Nowadays Romanian electoral system: high costs in human,
financial and time resources necessary for elections
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The analysis of the impact of existing electoral system on resources
Existing Romanian laws concerning elections and referenda provide three types of lists for
voters allowed to participate in elections:
● permanent electoral lists that keep a record of all Romanian citizens aged over 18, entitled to vote
(Law no.35/2008, art.26; Law no.33/2007, art.9(2); Law no.67/2004, art.16 (1));
● special electoral lists that keep a record of the communitarian voters (citizens having the right to vote of
the member states of the European Union, others than Romania, that have domicile or residence in Romania) that
required the enrollment, 60 days before the reference day (Law no.33/2007);
● supplementary lists that keep a record of: the voters that on the elections day make the proof that they have
the domicile in the area assigned to that specific polling station, but they have been omitted from the copy of the
electoral list; the members of the electoral bureaus of the polling stations and the security responsible persons
if they have the domicile in the area assigned to the uninominal college where they provide their services; Romanian
citizens living abroad that make the proof with a passport that they have the domicile in a country of that uninominal
college; Romanian citizens that reside in a country from that uninominal college; the staff of the diplomatic missions
and consulate offices (Law no.35/2008,art.27(1) and (2)); voters that, on the election day, are in other city than where
their domicile is; the members of the electoral bureaus of the polling stations and the persons responsible with security;
voters that exercise their vote through the special ballot box (Law no.33/2007, art.92 ); in the supplementary list there
are also registered the electors that established, with at least three months before the elections, their residence in the
electoral constituency where elections are taking place, and those who changed their domicile in another electoral
Constituency after the submission of the copy of the permanent electoral list to the electoral bureau of the polling station
(Law no.67/2004, art.19 and art.21(2));
Nowadays Romanian electoral system: high costs in human,
financial and time resources necessary for elections
● the citizens of the European Union omitted from the copy of the complementary electoral list, that on the
elections day make the proof of having their domicile or residence in the territorial area of the polling station
(Law no.67/2004, art. 223(1)).
Complementary lists that keep a record of the citizens of the European Union that have the right to vote
that are in the records of the Romanian Office for Immigrations and that have their domicile or residence in
the city for which the list is made; there are also registered, on request, the citizens of the European Union
with a right to vote having their domicile or residence in the territorial area of the electoral constituency
where elections are taking place, but who do not figure in the records of the Romanian Office for
Immigrations. (Law no.67/2004, art. 221 (1) and art. 223(1)).
Electoral tables that keep registered the electors that vote and make proof of having their domicile in the
territorial area of that specific polling station, but have been omitted from the copy of the permanent
electoral list; members of the electoral bureau of the polling station and the security responsible persons;
voters that, on the election day, are in other city than where their domicile is; voters that are voting in the
polling stations abroad (Law no.370/2004, art.7(2)).
It can be noticed in this presentation that defining the content of the six types of lists is confuse,
especially regarding the special electoral lists – complementary electoral lists,
supplementary electoral lists – electoral tables
These six types of lists allow the existence of multiple
personal records for the same voter
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The analysis of the impact of existing electoral system on resources
(continued)
There is no possibility to prevent multiple voting before casting votes.
Finding those voters who cast multiple votes can only be done after the voting day
is over.
Permanent electoral lists are printed from computer files, therefore they are clearly presented and
carry no mistakes, while supplementary and special lists are handwritten and are subject to several
kinds of human errors. Therefore, after scanning these supplementary and special lists, all of the
files such obtained must be manually verified and corrected before they could be used to find the
voters who several times on different lists.
The confuse definition of terms concerning the contents and the way the supplementary and special
lists are created and maintained lead to such results that cannot be used to obtain other useful
information like:
- the list of eligible voters excluded by mistake from the permanent
electoral lists;
- the list of voters who used only a part of the ballot papers they received in the case of
combined elections (i.e. elections for the major of the locality, together
with elections for the members in the local council and for the members in the county council).
Nowadays Romanian electoral system: high costs in human,
financial and time resources necessary for elections
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The analysis of the impact of existing electoral system on resources
(continued)
Observing the way electoral lists are created and maintained, we notice that:
● Only the permanent electoral lists are based on voter’s lists in electronic format, while data on the
other lists are handwritten.
● Regardless the legal provisions (Law no.35/2008) concerning the updating of the permanent
electoral lists, most real cases show that these rules are not applied, these lists still contain deceased
persons, persons having lost their Romanian citizenship or persons having lost their electoral rights.
● Checking for multiple voting can only be dome after voting has been closed, finding those persons
who cast multiple votes could only result in punishments according to law, while the wrong
results obtained from multiple voting cannot by no means be corrected.
In order to perform verification procedures, special and supplementary electoral lists must be converted
into electronic format by scanning and optical character recognition of handwritten texts of electoral lists,
then correction of inherent errors to obtain the electronic files of these lists. Then, these files are
compared with the files of all the other lists used in the election: permanent electoral lists, special
and supplementary electoral lists from all the polling stations.
Each voter recorded on a special or supplementary list must be verified if she cast votes in other polling
stations, on permanent, special or supplementary lists. For instance, concerning the 28 November 2004
elections for the Chamber of Deputies and for the Senate there should be checked everyone of the
1,247,369 participating voters recorded on special lists if they appear in everyone of the 35,058 lists
(permanents and specials) from all the 17,529 polling station. The nowadays Romanian electoral
system results in a huge financial, human and time resource consuming mechanism. Moreover,
false identities are allowed to enter special lists, for the evidence shall be produced later after such
voter casts a vote.
Nowadays Romanian electoral system: high costs in human,
financial and time resources necessary for elections
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Electoral event
Number of citizens
registered in the
electoral lists
Number of voters that participated in elections
On the
permanent
lists
On the special
electoral lists
Total
Turnout
November 25, 2007
European Parliament
Elections
18.267.634
4.765.465
604.706
5.370.171
29,4%
November 28, 2004
Legislative elections
18.449.344
9.547.284
1.247.369
10.794.653
58,5%
December 12, 2004
Presidential elections
(second scrutiny round)
18.316.104
9.297.657
814.605
10.112.262
55,5%
November 30, 2008
Parliamentary elections
18.464.274
7.029.169
209.702
7.238.871
39,20%
June 7, 2009
Alegerile pentru
Parlamentul European
18.197.316
4.367.064
668.234
5.035.298
27,67%
December 6, 2009
Presidential elections
(second scrutiny round)
18.303.224
9.586.040
1.034.076
10.620.116
58.02%
Nowadays Romanian electoral system: high costs in human,
financial and time resources necessary for elections
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Voter’s lists generated from population identification files are just
general stores of data
According to electoral laws in force, the permanent electoral list at the polling station
shall be a copy of the official permanent electoral list drawn up according to art.20 (a)
of the Law no.35/2008.
This copy of the permanent electoral list is drawn up and stores voter
personal data on paper. All the necessary information
concerning the way the voter has completed the voting session, such as:
- the confirmation of the polling station clerk that the voter has been
identified and authenticated,
- the signature of the voter confirming that he/she received the paper ballots,
are handwritten and provide no way to be related to other special and supplementary
electoral lists where the voter could apply to cast votes as well. Therefore, electoral
lists drawn up according to electoral laws in force do not allow for interactive
control against multiple voting.
Nowadays Romanian electoral system: high costs in human,
financial and time resources necessary for elections
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Lack of interaction between voters lists and electoral process
All the electoral laws in force have no provisions for observing that
the voter actually submits his/her vote in the ballot box.
Therefore, regardless the voter has already been identified and signed on the
permanent electoral list (or on supplementary and special lists), nobody can prove that
his/her vote was introduced in the ballot box. As a result, there could be differences
between the number of voters who signed on the permanent electoral lists as being
active participants in election and the number of cast votes found in the ballot box.
Regardless there is a population database all the printed permanent electoral lists are
based of, actual voting operations are manually recorded, thus providing no feedback to
the database in order to record a mark showing that some voter has cast a vote or not.
Therefore, there cannot be a preventive approach to avoid multiple voting before such
attempt could become effective.
Data entry errors (1)
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Data entry errors (2)
_______________________________________________________________
Identification and authentication errors
_______________________________________________________________
A child born in 1993 has been allowed to vote using supplementary lists
Considerations regarding the
legislation
Improvements to the existing legislation
A new, unitary law should be elaborated regarding the Electoral National Register and the types of electoral
lists necessary for elections and for referenda or regarding the unification of the electoral legislation in an
Electoral Code.
There should be eliminated from the Romanian electoral laws all the provisions regarding electoral lists and
replaced with referrals to the new law regarding the Electoral National Register and to the corresponding
types of electoral lists.
There should be eliminated the provisions that concern the cancelling from the lists of those persons that
lost their Romanian citizenship, and there should be provided a marking in their personal registers that
could be used in order to restrict these persons’ access to voting until they return all the official identification
documents emitted by the Romanian authorities. Afterwards, the personal registration of such a person will
be deleted from the National Electoral Register.
There should be eliminated the provisions that concern the cancelling from the lists of those persons that
lost their electoral rights and there should be provided a marking in their personal registers that could be
used in order to restrict these persons’ access to voting. It will also be provided a link to a folder where the
final court decision and the final term for the restriction to expire, in order to offer details for the uninformed
voter that tries to vote without having this right. This modification is based on the fact that these voters own
identity cards that don’t have mentions regarding these restrictions and they can vote pretending to have
been omitted from the electoral lists.
There should be introduced detailed provisions regarding the type of voting admitted for the persons with
disabilities as well as for illiterates.
Considerations regarding the
legislation
The necessity of a law concerning electronic voting
The Romanian electoral system is, technologically speaking, the most obsolete system in Europe.
Ever since 2004, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has adopted the principles, the
technical and operational standards, the technical procedures and demands, the conditions of security of the
vote, the audit and certification of the hardware, software and communicational components that will be
provided in the member states’ systems, that are contained in the recommendation Rec(2004)11.
The majority of the member states of the European Union have adopted the elaboration, experimentation
and application of some electronic voting systems. It is more and more actual the usage of electronic out of
country voting, through Internet, that offers the most economic advantages, accuracy and velocity in
obtaining the results of elections and referenda. The most advanced country is Estonia, that has already
implemented such a system, but also having the advantage of having a small size of the territory and a
small number of voters. Electronic voting systems are used in elections in other states as well, such as
Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Holland, etc., that still study the types of Internet voting that they
will apply.
In our country, through the concern of the Permanent Electoral Authority, there have been elaborated
researches for conceiving a Romanian electronic voting system that would integrate the most advanced
technologies of informatics and communication. The studies gathered also original solutions, that could
increase the economic efficiency of the system, would raise the level of security of the electoral processes
and would eliminate the gap between our state and the other member states of the European Union. Still,
lacking a specific law regarding electronic voting, there is no certain basis for providing
budgetary allowances necessary for the elaboration of the software system and for acquiring the
equipments designed for the implementation of the electronic voting for the future parliamentary elections.
Electronic voting is the only solution for ensuring the participation on elections of the Romanian
citizens that are abroad.
End of the slide show
Thank you !