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Local elections in schools, followed by courses in banks. Should the combination in war with SARS-CoV-2 be fatal?
Two weeks after school starts, there will be local elections. They will be in schools, where polling stations are organized. The elections will be held on Sunday, and on Monday, September 28, the courses will take place normally, according to the information so far. It seems like a fatal combination. In the corridors, in the classrooms (which will become polling stations on September 27) tens of thousands of people will walk to elect their mayor, so that the next day the students can return to the benches. Spacing, mask, hand washing, disinfection, we keep listening. On the day of the vote, good faith and the holy observance of the measures still heard seem to be at stake. All state representatives, when asked, give the same standard answer. If this were the way things worked in Romania, we wouldn’t have an average of 1,200 cases a day now, would we? If we had all followed the rules, until today, March, we should not have had an explosion of cases, a 10-fold increase, but a break in the transmission chain. The virus lives among us and, unfortunately, it lives for a long time on different surfaces, for hours, tens of hours. Will all of Romania understand on September 27 what it has not understood for half a year?
We know that the government pretends not to see. You can’t see much from Victoria Palace, so no solutions can appear. You can’t solve problems that you don’t see exist. But the Executive does not even listen. So I would like to repeat the questions that I have already raised for a long time.
MASK DOWN THREE SECONDS x 2
For DCNews, in an official response, AEP responded that there is no response on the recognition of the masked identity, at the voting station. Recently, I learned from the President of the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP), Constantin Mituleţu-Buică, that we will be recognized in THREE SECONDS, during which time we will give the MASK DOWN, twice: “The real time will be the same, only that You must remove your mask, be identified. Under the same conditions, to the president of the voting table ”.
We do not know if it is a procedure, if we count to three and put the mask back on. It is a public statement.
But we know the following: the citizen with the right to vote appears before the computer operator, after disinfection. He puts his hand in his wallet, on the ballot he gives to the operator, puts his hand on the mask and takes it off for three seconds to identify himself. Put the mask back on his face. He takes his ballot, goes to the section president. He gives the bulletin, puts the mask back on for three seconds, long enough to be identified, apparently, he puts his hand back on the mask, puts it back on. He signs, they give him the ballot and the stamp, he takes out his ballot, he puts it in his wallet, it is disinfected.
In theory, it was not advisable to touch the mask when wearing it. There are exceptions!
The citizen, solely responsible for the actual voting time
Although no simulation was made, the president of the AEP says that “if every citizen follows the rules, time should not be affected. (…) The real time will be the same. (…) From our point of view, as things stand, the flow should not be impeded in any way. ” The responsibility of the moment in which the voting process will take place lies, therefore, with the citizen and, from the institutional level, we have points of view based on the hypothesis that the citizen respects the rules. Following this logic, the flow would be difficult only if the citizen does not follow the rules.
“Rigorous disinfection”
As we have already pointed out, there is a lot of talk about disinfecting polling stations, booths, and the seal, but so far we only know that voters have to disinfect their hands when entering and leaving the polling station. For effective disinfection, referring here to the organization, we learn, even from AEP, that “a procedure for disinfection of polling stations is not regulated,” although the Government speaks of “rigorous disinfection.”
President Klaus Iohannis welcomed the questions and expressed his belief that the Government will take action in this regard. We will see if that happens or not.
Meanwhile, we are curious, in the absence of a procedure, what does “rigorous” mean in the effective application of disinfection in polling stations?
No action is taken without a simulation
Because there is no simulation about voting in a pandemic context and it is the responsibility of the voter, no additional measures will be taken as in the diaspora, such as: several polling stations, extended program if, when polling stations close, there are queues .
The government sounds the alarm: the elections could be INVALIDATED
And since such measures are not taken into account, the agglomeration that will form outside the electoral college is not anticipated either. If a space is established inside, there are no rules for the outside. AEP responded that the legislation applicable to the 2020 local elections does not include express provisions in this situation. Probably, as in the other cases, we depend on the observance of the rules by the citizens.
The sociologist Vasile Dâncu said, in the DC Alegi program on Tuesday, that “This government is not thinking, it is not simulating the vote. We could see, if we calculate the fact that there are 16 people at the voting station, that the seal must be disinfected after each person and if we calculate the time, in a voting table where 1500 people normally vote, in a neighborhood. From Bucharest, you have seen that there are queues in all kinds of elections, only a fifth or a quarter of these people can vote. So we could have some hellish tails, people could give up because that’s how the danger of infection increases, it’s much higher, and then we could have some failed options from this perspective. Here the Government should think very well, do some simulations on the levels of participation. If we have 30% – 40%, let’s see what happens. How many sections do we need, what does the distance between people mean? Let’s not wake up that we also have a flawed result or contested elections. If the people stay and cannot vote, the election could be invalidated, normally. ”
“They will hate us all”
Furthermore, in this context, Vasile Dâncu said: “I try to be positive and I hope that the Government, Parliament and the parties will think together what needs to be done to overcome this possibility. It would not be a victory. It would be a sad victory for the opposition to say that the government missed some elections, because some people are missing in terms of their desire for democracy. A part of the electorate that will see that the Government could not hate all politicians and all parties ”.
*** The article presents an opinion based on formal responses and policy analysis ***
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