Election commission: Saeima vote will proceed even by candlelight
Central Election Commission head Māris Zviedris says the 15th Saeima elections will go ahead even amid power or communication disruptions, since votes are counted by hand. Contingency plans are also in place for possible air raid alerts.
Māris Zviedris, head of Latvia's Central Election Commission (CVK), said in an interview with Latvian Television's "Viens pret vienu" that the upcoming 15th Saeima elections in early October will take place regardless of possible power outages. He noted that vote counting could even proceed by candlelight, since the decision to count ballots manually was made long ago, making computers unnecessary for the process itself.
Zviedris said diesel generators won't be available at every polling station, but external battery packs will be provided to keep computers running. Contingency scenarios have also been discussed in case mobile communications fail, though he did not elaborate on the details. If the online voter register is unavailable on election day, ballots will be placed in the same type of envelopes used during the five preceding days of advance voting.
Response to air raid alerts
Should at least an orange-level air raid alert — for instance, related to drones — be declared during voting or vote counting, polling station chairs will be responsible for coordinating staff and voters to a safe location. All municipal polling station managers have already identified such safe spaces. If a station's operations must be suspended for a longer period, the local election commission or the CVK may extend its working hours until 10 p.m.
Assuming the process runs smoothly, preliminary results on party standings could be available around 2 a.m., while preliminary data on candidates' pluses and strikeouts may follow closer to morning.
This week, polling station commissions began practical testing of election systems, with a large share of municipalities — including a third of Riga's polling stations — already having tried them out. Zviedris said no functional errors have been found so far, including when more than 2,000 devices connected to the register simultaneously. Full system readiness will be confirmed next week once final performance tests conclude. The 15th Saeima elections are scheduled for Saturday, October 3.
