Election chief: two ways to speed up vote counting in future elections

The head of Latvia's Central Election Commission (CVK), Māris Zviedris, said at a press conference in the early hours of Sunday, October 4, that vote counting in the 15th Saeima election had been delayed because officials needed extra time to identify ballots that had been cast more than once by the same voter.

According to Zviedris, there are two possible ways to prevent such delays in future elections. The first option would be to scrap the current procedure that allows voting documents to be deposited for safekeeping ahead of election day. The second, more complex option would involve amending the Constitution (Satversme) to formally permit early voting, a step that would clarify a currently ambiguous situation that can lead to double voting — ballots the commission must later detect and filter out.

Zviedris noted that the search for and resolution of these duplicate ballots was the main reason behind this election's delayed count. He did not give a timeline for when either proposed fix might be adopted, but presented both as potential ways to streamline the counting process and prevent similar holdups in future elections.