The discussion was attended by the representatives of the Central Electoral Commission of the Republic of Lithuania and by the members of the Lithuanian Seimas factions.
After a comprehensive presentation of the report, the participants actively discussed the electoral issues. The chairwoman of the EAPL faction Rita Tamašunienė enquired the OSCE representatives about their opinion on the fact that in Lithuania major electoral changes are happening in less than a year before elections. After all, such situation has emerged yet in 2012 when prior to the parliamentary elections the electoral boundaries were suddenly changed. Citizens and political representatives of national minorities were negatively affected by this change, since they experienced strong constraints on the freedom of choice. Electoral boundaries have been modified even in the two constituencies where other nationalities composed a majority of population, and, consequently, the greater part of the voters was placed into another constituency and lost any opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Such changes of the policy lead to the lost opportunity to express the true will of a voter and of a citizen too.
Therefore, the chairwoman of the faction Rita Tamašunienė has noted not in vain that various frequently occurring changes of electoral system and the organization of elections, happening in less than one year before the elections, occurred to be a really significant problem. Furthermore, it is proposed to introduce some changes in the EP electoral system; however, this topic leaves a room of uncertainty and remains not discussed enough.
OSCE representatives noted that the constituency boundaries’ changes and other major electoral system changes must be implemented no later than one year before the elections. Moreover, it is very important to organize an open discussion concerning such transformations, attracting and listening to citizens of both sides of the camp. In addition, it was stressed that all interest groups have to participate in politics and, hence, the electoral threshold for national minority parties should be reduced to 3 percent according to the number of voters that turned out in elections (currently it is 5 percent).
The OSCE representatives did not forget to mention that the electorates' quality of awareness depends heavily on the language that is used to provide information. 'Placing information on voting procedures in the languages of national minorities, in particular in the areas inhabited by the communities of national minorities, would help to ensure that voters belonging to such communities would not have to deal with the obstacles that might arise due to the language barrier,' underlined the OSCE representatives.
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