Belarus Embassy In Russia Blames Queues Of Voters On Pandemic, Reluctance To Vote Early

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th August, 2020) The Belarusian Embassy in Russia has explained huge queues of voters outside the diplomatic mission on the election day by its impaired capacity due to COVID-19 restrictions and people's reluctance to cast ballots early.

Belarus went to the polls to elect a new president on Sunday. Belarusians living abroad lined up outside diplomatic missions to cast their vote, but not all of them managed to do so before polling sites closed. Moscow and St. Petersburg also saw huge queues of Belarusian voters. Ahead of the election, the Belarusian opposition had urged people to go to the polls closer to the end of voting hours to prevent alleged fraud.

"Taking into account the observed increase in interest in the election among voters abroad and the simultaneous decrease in the capacity of polling sites due to measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection, the embassy's website in advance published an appeal for citizens to be as active as possible on the days of early voting," the diplomatic mission said.

The embassy noted that these calls, first of all, concerned those Belarusians who were not registered at consulates and, consequently, were not included in voter lists. The procedure for adding a citizen to the list of voters of a foreign polling place and excluding them from the list of voters of a polling site at the place of their registration in Belarus also required additional time, it specified.

The polling places closed at 8:00 p.m. (17:00 GMT) in accordance with the electoral code of Belarus. After the vote count finished, precinct election commissions in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad ceased to exist.

"In this regard, appeals to diplomatic missions abroad in connection with issues related to the activities of precinct election commissions have no grounds," the press release stated.

These issues will be taken into account when organizing voting abroad in the future, the embassy pledged.