Gaspar: Proposal to Scrap Voting by Mail from Abroad to Appear at April Session

Bratislava, 27 February (TASR) - A proposal to scrap the option of voting from abroad in general elections by mail will be discussed at the next parliamentary session due to begin on 14 April, House Vice-chair Tibor Gaspar (Smer-SD) told journalists on Friday. He defended the plan to replace voting by mail with voting at embassies and other potential selected places by pointing to fears that the elections could be manipulated, including via voting by correspondence cards. He declined to say for now whether the proposal will be submitted by the government or by MPs. "Information is emerging about elections being manipulated in various ways, and all possibilities for manipulation need to be excluded by law," stated Gaspar, who expressed concerns that manipulation is possible when voting by mail. "If someone takes the correspondence cards of the whole family and expresses his/her opinion, not that of family members, and votes in this way, what the Constitution assumes - personal choice - isn't fully respected," he added. Gaspar said that he doesn't know anything more about the content of the proposal, but he confirmed that it should be submitted within the standard deadline, i.e. no later than 15 days before the start of the April session. When asked why the coalition has come up with a change to the manner of voting from abroad right now, Gaspar replied that suspicions of various forms of manipulation have emerged in connection with the 2023 election. "As there are attempts to manipulate elections and it's not just about Slovakia. We've already have several different pieces of evidence about this, and I'm not just talking about those paid influencers from Great Britain, I'm talking about the Epstein files and the assessment of an American committee from the US Senate, so I believe that every opportunity for manipulation, including correspondence voting, must be eliminated," stressed the House vice-chair. ko/df