Prague, June 2 (CTK) – About fifty researchers from various institutes of the Czech Science Academy called on the two houses of parliament to make postal voting possible on their appeal available to CTK.
The small right-wing opposition party TOP 09 presented the draft amendments to the voting laws earlier this week.
Thanks to postal voting, many expatriates who live far from Czech diplomatic offices could cast their votes, the researchers write in their appeal.
They argue that only a fraction of the hundreds of thousand of Czechs living abroad take part in Czech elections because they must go to embassies or consular offices, which is a problem especially in big countries like Australia, the United States and Russia.
“There are no rational arguments why this type of voting should not be applied in the Czech Republic,” they write, saying that postal voting has been introduced in 24 countries.
TOP 09 deputy chairwoman Marketa Pekarova Adamova said postal voting should be allowed in the European elections, which will be held in 2019, the general election and the presidential election.
“If smoothly approved, the postal voting could be applied already in the elections to the European Parliament next year,” she said.
TOP 09 submitted a bill introducing postal voting already in the previous election period, but the then government coalition of the Social Democrats (CSSD), the ANO movement and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) rejected it.