The Chief Electoral Officer Dr Kostas A. Constantinou presented this morning, to the representatives of the Media, the final sample ballot for the 2023 Presidential Elections.
In his statements to journalists, the Registrar General said the following. After some preparatory work done by the Government Printing Office, we have arrived at the final sample, which yesterday was brought to the attention of the candidates' representatives, who were asked to review it for any comments of their own concerning their candidate."
Dr Constantine said "some suggestions were made regarding some details of the ballot paper" by candidates, saying "appropriate corrections were made and now we have the final sample of the ballot paper, which has already been instructed to the Government Printing Office to proceed with the process of printing the regular ballot papers."
The ballot paper, he said, includes 14 candidates. "The length of the ballot paper is the same as in previous times, due to technical constraints from the dimensions of the available paper and the way the printing press machines can operate," the Auditor General explained.
He explained that what is different in this election process is that to enable all 14 candidates to fit on the ballot paper, the width of each candidate's column has been reduced to about 4 centimetres. He noted that the reduction was done in such a way so that the candidates could be distinguished and for voters to be able to make their choices.
"Further, an arrangement was made so that the candidates are numbered in such a way that their order can be easily identified by their ranking number," he added.
He pointed out that "the order in which the candidates have been placed on the ballot paper is the order determined by the law, that is, we started with the candidates who are party candidates or represent party combinations, in alphabetical order of the parties or party combinations they represent, followed by the independent candidates, again in alphabetical order of the suffix of each candidate."
Asked by a reporter to indicate the time when the ballot papers will proceed to printing by the Government Printing Office, the Auditor General, after thanking the Director of the Government Printing Office and his staff for their contribution, replied that instructions have already been given for the trial printing to commence. He clarified that once the trial printing is completed, which is expected to be done within the day, the model ballot paper will be validated by him, and from tomorrow the Government Printing Office will proceed with the mass printing of the ballot papers, which will take about a week. A total of 590,000 ballot papers will be printed.
The ballot papers, he continued, once printed, "will be under police guard at the Printing House until 31 January so that the electoral process is fully safeguarded. At the same time, the staff of the Printing House will distribute the ballot papers according to the needs of each polling station." Subsequently, he said, they will be given to the Returning Officers, who on their own responsibility will place them in the ballot boxes and deliver them to the Presiding Officers on the Friday before the elections.
Asked to comment on the objections of candidates and the notices issued in this regard, the Registrar General clarified that "the law does not provide for an objection procedure with regard to the ballot paper". He explained that what is provided by the legislation is that each candidate declares the name under which he or she will be listed on the ballot paper, as well as the candidate's photograph and, if desired, an emblem.
He noted that the emblem is submitted with the nomination and that once the nominations are validated, neither the emblem nor the photograph can be changed.
Finally, he said that representations were made by a particular candidate, to whom the relevant provision of the legislation was explained, namely that there is no possibility of changing the emblem at this stage. He further noted that the legislation specifies which emblems are rejected and that the particular one for which representations were made was not included. He further noted that on his own instructions, such adjustment was made to the shade of the particular emblem to avoid any confusion among voters.
[FOR BALLOT PAPER PRESENTATION SEE. here]
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