- Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Tibor Gašpar connects the proposal with concerns about election manipulation.
- According to Gašpar, suspicions and evidence of election manipulation increased after the 2023 elections.
- Deputy Michal Bartek supports the intention of the change, but the Hlas-SD party has not yet decided.
The proposal to cancel voting by mail from abroad in parliamentary elections will be discussed at the next meeting of the National Council (NR) of the Slovak Republic, which begins on April 14. Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Tibor Gašpar (Smer-SD) told journalists this on Friday. The intention to replace voting by mail with voting at embassies and possibly selected locations is defended by the fear of manipulation of elections also through voting by mail. He could not yet say whether the proposal would be submitted by the government or the deputies.
“Information is emerging that the elections are manipulated in various ways, and all possibilities for manipulation must be excluded from the law,” Gašpar said. He fears that manipulation is possible when voting by mail. “When someone takes the correspondence cards of the whole family and expresses his opinion, not the members of the family, and throws them, or in other words votes in this way, then what the constitution assumes, that it is a personal choice, is not fully respected.” he added.
Gašpar does not know anything more about the content of the proposal, but he confirmed that the proposal should come by default 15 days before the beginning of the April meeting. “The coalition has to agree on what form it will take. And I don’t know yet whether it will be presented by MPs in the coalition or only by Smerák MPs,” he stated. He thinks that the Department of Foreign Affairs came into the discussion with the idea that in those countries where a larger number of Slovaks live, elections should be prepared in such a way that everyone can have the opportunity to vote.
When asked why the coalition is now changing the election from abroad, Gašpar replied that it was only in connection with the 2023 elections that suspicions of various methods of manipulation appeared. “Since there are attempts to manipulate elections and it’s not only Slovakia, we already have several different proofs about it, and I’m not just talking about those paid influencers from Great Britain, I’m talking about Epstein’s files and about the evaluations, I suspect, of the American committee from the American Senate, I think that every possibility where manipulation is possible and there is in the case of correspondence voting, must be eliminated,” emphasized the deputy speaker of the parliament.
The member of the National People’s Republic of Slovakia Michal Bartek from Hlas-SD agrees with the intention to replace voting by mail with voting at embassies or other selected locations. He is also concerned about the manipulation of postcards. According to him, however, Hlase-SD does not yet have an agreement to support the proposal, they have not yet seen a specific proposal.
