First day of municipal elections in Prague: Three commissions disbanded, elections are also held in cafes
The seven-member committee consisted of all age categories. “However, what is interesting is that our voters were almost all senior citizens. It copies the average in Prague 10, which is one of the highest in the metropolis,” explained Hamrník, adding that he expects younger people to go to the polls only later on their way from work.
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Jan Hamrník not only records who has already voted, but citizens often ask him how they can cross off. “He doesn’t know if the whole party or if they should add some more people to it. It is true that this system is not completely simple, so we explain it to people as members of the electoral commission,” says Hamrník.
I already know that there is no point in rushing anything
Šárka Hudečková, the chairperson of the election commission of Věčhovice, who has already participated in twenty elections, admits that the system is complex. “Am I afraid of counting? You know I’m scared. Precisely because I know what awaits us. If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t be afraid,” Hudečková told Pražské deník with a laugh.
He considers the elections to municipal councils to be the most complicated. And even in the past, during the census, it happened that they could not complete the calculation – for example, an envelope was missing or left over.
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“I now know that there is no point in rushing anything. We have a double control system, we recalculate everything to eliminate errors,” describes Hudečková, who sits on the election commission in Běchovice at the town hall.
“The average age of our electoral commission is around 50 years. And as for the age of our voters who already came to vote on Friday, we had a lot of 18-year-old first-time voters, but we also had a 94-year-old senior citizen come to us,” Hudečková said.
A queue of dozens of people
In neighboring Klánovice, a queue of several dozen citizens began to form before two o’clock in the afternoon, when the doors to the polling station opened. They were waiting at Masaryk elementary school to be able to vote.
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Even before that happened, Mayor Zorka Starčevičová came to greet the members of the electoral commission. “Klánovice has roughly 3,600 inhabitants, there are almost 2,700 voters, so our election commission faces a difficult task to count it all correctly,” revealed the mayor, who already reported one of the highest voter turnouts in the metropolis around five o’clock on Friday afternoon – over 21 percent.
Eight and her best
Prague 8 is the third largest electoral district. And in this year’s elections, it also has another electoral “best” – for example, the smallest independent electoral district. You are in the Kobylisa Senior Citizens Home.
“We also have the most populous electoral district in the whole of Prague – at the Libeň gymnasium. It reads 3500 voters. However, the commission does not have such a difficult time with the census, as it belongs to one of the countries with the lowest voter turnout. These are voters who have a permanent address at the office, so usually no one goes to vote,” Martin Šalek, spokesman for Prague 8, revealed to Pražské deník.
At six they vote in a cafe
As for polling stations, the majority of ballot boxes can be found by the people of Prague in elementary schools. An exception is, for example, in Prague 6 Písecká brána at Hradčany. Voters come here to vote in a reconstructed baroque building, where concerts and exhibitions are regularly held.
“The polling station is located in a cafe, so voters can combine the pleasant with the useful – vote and have a coffee or snack at the same time. A number of voters-dog walkers who bring their four-legged pets with them also go to Písecká brány. Once, a voter who came to Písecká brána said to me: I would prefer to vote in this polling station,” recalled Jiří Hannich, spokesman for Prague 6.