Romanians Abroad Waited Hours to Vote, Polling Stations Overwhelmed by High Turnout

Several thousand people were unable to vote in London, despite waiting for several hours, according to witness accounts and videos shares on social media. With lines forming early in the day at the Harrow Council polling station, voters advanced at a slow pace, and anyone still outside of the station’s perimeter when closed at 21.00 local time were unable to vote.

Similar situations were reported in Stuttgart, where local police had to intervene to maintain order amid approximately 2,500 dissatisfied voters, who had been waiting for several hours to cast their ballots, but also in Dortmund, Offenbach, Munchen, Valencia , Brussels, Rome, Verona, Dublin, Athens, Amsterdam, Lille, Berlin and Regensburg.

In many of the polling stations in the aforementioned cities, people waiting in lines chanted “we want to vote” and “thieves”, as lines that went back hundreds of meters advanced at a snail's pace. Minor incidents took place in several cases, where voters who were unable to cast their ballots tried to force their way into the polling stations after they closed.

Despite the numerous accounts of problems with voting abroad, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) announced on Sunday afternoon that it had no legal possibility to extend voting hours, after it received a request in this regard from the bureau in charge with monitoring polling stations abroad.

Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Teodor Melescanu, who oversaw similar problems with voting abroad during the run-off of the 2014 presidential elections, said that he has “nothing to reproach himself” over the incidents, admitting that new laws were needed to accommodate the large number of voters abroad. The minister also denied on Sunday evening, in an interview for Digi24, that a possible emergency decree to allow extending voting hours abroad, which was speculated as a possible solution, could have been passed on such short notice.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and the opposition Liberal Party and USR-PLUS Alliance asked for the government’s resignation over the incidents, in reactions after polls closed on Sunday evening.

According to BEC data, approximately 375,000 Romanians voted in polling stations abroad in the European Parliament elections and judicial referendum on Sunday.

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