Interest in voting from the car was rather lower than in the last election
Updates: 10/06/2021 18:50
Released: 06.10.2021, 18:47
Prague – People quarantined or isolated because of coronavirus were less interested in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies, where they could cast their votes from the car today than in the regional and senate elections last year. Last year, however, due to the covid-19 disease, there could not be more than usual this year in ordinary polling stations. Today, individual regions prove tens to hundreds of votes cast, according to the statements of representatives of regional authorities and the Prague City Hall. There were 82 so-called drive-in stations prepared throughout the Czech Republic, mostly in car parks or on the premises of state institutions. The votes they cast there today began to count with the others, ie on Saturday afternoon after the end of the elections and the closing of polling stations throughout the Czech Republic.
The epidemic situation with coronavirus was worse last year than at present. “Last year, more than 5,000 people voted in this way and there were about 20,000 people in quarantine. Now around 10,000 people are in quarantine or isolated. However, there is usually more voter interest in parliamentary elections,” Deputy Interior Minister Petr Vokáč said today. According to the director of the election department of the Ministry of the Interior, Tomáš Jírovec, information about today’s overall turnout will be known on Thursday morning.
With today’s vote of the quarantined people or in isolation between 08:00 and 17:00, the parliamentary elections began. Citizens who, for serious reasons, cannot vote from the car today can apply for the opportunity to vote from home to special portable ballot boxes until Thursday evening.
For example, in the Hradec Králové region today, 37 people cast their voices from a car, more than half of them in the Hradec Králové district. In the last elections to the region and in some districts to the Senate, 190 people in the Hradec Králové region used voting from a car.
In the Vysočina region today, 87 people voted from the car, last year it was 259 citizens and another 50 people in the second round of the Senate elections. In the Ústí nad Labem Region, 72 people took part in the election from the car today, and 214 in the last regional elections. .
In the Moravian-Silesian Region, on the other hand, interest was slightly higher than in the previous regional elections. Today, 257 people voted from the car, last year 234 citizens. This year most of them came to Ostrava, he can’t to Bruntál. In Prague, 282 people cast their votes at drive-in stations, and 185 people in the South Moravian Region.
There was no interest in elections from the car in the Pilsen Region, where they had 60 votes cast an hour before the end of voting. According to Michal Bartoš, director of the Regional Hygiene Station in Pilsen, they are in isolation or quarantined in the region – 950 of them are in quarantine after contact with an infected person, 650 in self-isolation after restoration from abroad from a risky country.
In southern Bohemia, around a hundred people cast their votes at 4:30 p.m. Participation could be affected by the weather, during the day it rained a lot in the region. At the same time, they registered 59 votes cast in the Pardubice Region. People in quarantine or isolation in the Karlovy Vary region had very little interest in the elections. In Cheb, before the closure of the drive-in stations, they had one vote cast, in Sokolov two and in Karlovy Vary nine.