RESIDENTS of Slovak villages, towns and cities elected their mayors and local council representatives on November 15. The police registered almost 88 motions, of which 51 involved suspicions of vote-buying. Some of such suspicions postponed the closing of polling stations by nearly an hour after the original closing time of 20:00.
Ľubomír Ábel, vice-president of the Police Corps reported that until 20:00 on November 15 the police registered 88 motions of various characters, of which 51 involved suspicions of vote-buying or so-called election corruption. In 45 cases the suspicions were checked directly at the spot while these were not confirmed. In six cases the police accepted filed criminal complaints. The police received 13 motions involving violation of the election moratorium.
Suspicions of vote-buying occurred in Vranov nad Topľou, Košice, Kremnica, Žarnovica and others.
The elections in Košice-Lunik was suspended for 38 minutes in the morning after the election commission found out that one voter was marking names of candidates on her ballots based on information she had on a separate paper. According to Eva Chmelová from the Central Election Commission, the election corruption was not confirmed, saying that using such aid does not mean vote-buying. Later during the day the suspicion of vote-buying occurred in front of a polling station while the police dealt with it. Due to this suspension the polling station closed by 38 minutes later, at 20:38, according to the TASR newswire.
In the village of Svinia in the Presov district, some voters also had notes with them for whom to vote. This caused an interruption of the election for 45 minutes and postponing of the closing of the poll.
Vote-buying suspicions in the form of verbal encouraging to vote for a selected candidate were confirmed in Vranov nad Topľou. The local election commission passed the case to the police.
About 4.4 million voters were eligible to cast ballots in the municipal elections and thus decide about mayors in almost 3,000 municipalities and elect thousands of deputies of regional governments on November 15.
