In Romania, once every 5 years we elect the president and European deputies, and once every 4 years – parliamentarians and local authorities. According to the Least Common Multiple rule learned in 6th grade, once every 20 years we conduct all 4 surveys in the same year. Nothing supernatural, just that our politicians (especially from the PNL) were surprised to learn that next year, 2024, this disaster will happen.

Taking into account the periods when they were last conducted, the surveys should be conducted as follows:

• June 7, European Parliament;
• local elections in the last decade of September;
• the second decade (first round) and the last decade from November (second round), presidential elections;
• first decade of December Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

Note that the last three elections (including one in two rounds) must take place in less than three months. Since each election period (collection of signatures, nominations, actual campaign) lasts more than two months, it is obvious that they will overlap. This can cause serious inconvenience. For example, several central and local polling stations will work simultaneously. It is also possible that the collection of signatures for presidential candidates will take place on the day of local elections and 48 hours before them, when, according to the law, there are many restrictions on political activity.

President Iohannis fears that the election year will prevent politicians from properly managing the government: “And I don’t know if, by holding elections in the country for one and a half years, we are doing a good thing for ordinary people.” In addition, several political leaders of the PNL expressed concern that “four series of elections in 2024 are many for the citizens and mean a large expenditure from the budget” (Lucian Bode). Therefore, the main arguments for unification would be shortening the period of dominance of electoral activity and reducing budget expenditures.”

It is all the more surprising that the participants in the discussion talk exclusively about combining local elections with parliamentary ones. Practically, this will mean either the postponement of parliamentary elections or the postponement of local elections. The first option is excluded due to part (3) of Article 63 of the Constitution, from which it follows that elections cannot be held more than 20 days before the end of the mandate of the current parliamentarians (December 29). The postponement of local elections involves the extension of the powers of mayors and councilors. But according to Article 151, paragraph (3) of the Administrative Code, this can only be done “in the event of war, natural disaster, disaster or particularly grave calamity”, which we hope will not happen (except that the PSD-PNL government should be declared a particularly serious disaster). Of course, it is possible to force amendments to the law, the Boc Government also tried in 2012, but the Constitutional Court recognized the unconstitutionality of the law in its Decision No. 51/2012.

What will the association decide?

Leaving the legal considerations to the lawyers, let’s see what the consequences of such a merger would actually be.

As for the shortening of the period that is supposed to dominate the election, it will still cover the whole year, because the first election will also be in June (campaigning starts in May), and the last one will conclude with the distribution of parliamentary mandates, which will take place at the end of the year. So we will still have three quarters of “electoral quarrels” (of which, by the way, there is no shortage now).

Regardless of whether the local elections are postponed to December or the parliamentary elections are postponed to September, the question of overlapping election campaigns will remain unresolved, since the presidential elections will still be held in November.

As far as the financial economy is concerned, it should be known that approximately half of the costs of election voting are represented by the payment of election commission members and computer operators. One ballot instead of two does not mean halving these amounts, because the election commission member’s allowance is expressed in conditional days of activity, which will be more in the case of a ballot with six instead of four ballots. It can be calculated that these costs will be reduced by a third. The rest of the expenses (the main share – payment of campaign expenses to the parties) remain unchanged. So we’re talking about a savings of 33% out of 50%, which is below 20% of the total.

What problems will the merger cause?

The simultaneous holding of local and parliamentary elections causes a number of technical problems. For example, people with the right to vote are not the same: European citizens living in the area can vote in local elections, but not in parliamentary elections; On the contrary, Romanian citizens abroad can vote in parliamentary elections, but not in local elections. Also the fact that you can vote in parliamentary elections in any settlement in your district of residence, but not in local elections. Not to mention the fact that due to the concern of parliamentarians, who forgot that they promised to unify the legislation in the election code, we have a number of divergent provisions regarding the two types of elections – for example, the procedure for the accreditation of observers. Of course, there are problems that can be solved, but knowing the quality of training of polling station heads and members, we have reason to expect that the number of incidents and protocols with more or less legally corrected errors will be even higher than in previous polls.

As a former presiding officer, I can tell you that running four elections on one vote (ie four ballots) like the current local elections is a nightmare. Manual accounting of the contents of the ballot box followed by the drawing up of a thick protocol at a polling station with an average number of 500 voters by tired and nervous election commission employees is an operation that takes no less than an hour and a half. In the case of combining local and parliamentary shifts, this will have to be multiplied by 6. So, for some 16-hour shifts, at least 9 hours of work. Will we be surprised that the accuracy of the results obtained will leave much to be desired and that there will be appeals after appeals?

But this is not the main problem, but a fundamental one related to the object of the elections. Local elections should be about problems specific to each settlement, and parliamentary elections should be about national politics. Electoral alliances formed for local elections are likely to differ from those formed for parliament: this is an additional source of confusion for voters. In order for people to really vote consciously, it is necessary that discussions be held separately, which is impossible in the conditions of a joint election campaign.

In fact, in the debate for/against the unification of elections, two opposite concepts collide. For some, elections are a waste of time and money, they should be held as rarely as possible and without much discussion. This is part of the concept of “minimalist democracy”, which I have written about on another occasion. For others, elections are the primary way people exercise control over their elected officials, and deserve consideration in terms of how democratic we want our society to be.

What could be done

There is no mention at all of the possibility of combining the parliamentary and presidential elections. They would be too close anyway (two weeks between the second round of presidential and parliamentary elections). From a legal point of view, there are no serious obstacles: if the first round takes place in early December, then the second round can be organized in time for the newly elected president to start his term after December 21, 2024, when the term of office of Klaus Iohannis ends.

Given the complexity of the electoral process, managing three ballots would be no more difficult than four in local elections. In addition, the organization of polling stations abroad and one-time voting by mail will significantly reduce the costs associated with elections. One way or another, until 2004 we had joint presidential and parliamentary elections without any particular obstacles.

From the point of view of content, the themes of the two campaigns do not diverge: both are about national politics, and the presidential candidates will be supported by the same parties that will run for parliament. Read the rest on Contributors.ro