Election 2023: voters under the age of 116

Thousands of those who died decades ago continue to remain on the voter lists due to the negligence (and inertia) of the administrative machine.

As a result, the number of those who “abstained” is in practice lower than recorded. However, although the constitution provides for the obligation of a citizen to participate in elections, aboutthere is no penalty for not voting since the 2001 revision of the constitution.

Looking through the voter lists for the national elections to be held on May 21, 2023, one can find many people over 100 years old, while some are no longer alive, but, nevertheless, they are formally included in the voter lists. In particular, 4,760,042 men and 5,049,998 women are currently registered in the voter lists, totaling 9,810,040 potential voters. But it is estimated that about 10% of them will not be able to go to the polls, either because they are long dead or because they have been living abroad for decades.

Usually if someone does not provide a death certificate to the relevant municipality, the deceased is not removed from the electoral roll until the end of the century, because no one takes the responsibility to exclude someone “without thirty proofs”. In the last twenty years, based on the law, in order to bury or cremate someone, relatives must present a death certificate, so it seems that the problem is gradually being solved. However voter lists include people who may have died decades before the law went into effect.

To solve the problem of accumulation in voter lists of persons over 100 years of ageabout ten years ago, the administration, by issuing a special circular, decided that every year, those who, theoretically, on the basis of their date of birth, are over 116 years old are automatically excluded from the voter lists.

Why the “threshold” was set at 116 years no one can explain, probably it was a choice that seemed safe to the leaders who made the decision. Based on this strategy, 9,800 people will be excluded from the voter lists next year.

According to the law, citizens over 70 years of age who are abroad and who are more than 200 kilometers from their polling station on election day cannot vote. This decision will have a significant impact on the number of people who travel to their polling stations on the eve of the elections.

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