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CCR rejects to change the electoral law: local elections remain in single-round
The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) has rejected on Wednesday a challenge of some provisions of the Law on local elections, including those stipulating the single-round election.
Liviu Avram, a journalist, has filed his candidacy for Bucharest mayor with the open purpose of challenging the law, firstly by deliberately ignoring the request of a minimum number of citizen signatures, and secondly by opposing the single-round system. He sued the electoral authority who rejected his candidacy, and then he notified the Constitutional Court within the legal process.
CCR President Augustin Zegrean explained the ruling by not finding any reason and not hearing any argument to change the Court's longstanding practice, which is to leave the election laws to the Parliament. "Moreover, the Venice Commission [of the Council of Europe] also says there is no problem and no law is infringed and no right to elect or be elected by setting the condition of signatures."
The local elections law in force stipulates that candidates must collect and submit signatures of voters in their constituency in support of their candidacy - no less than 100 for communes, 500 for towns and 1000 for Bucharest districts and general municipality; Avram had intentionally filed only three such signatures. The CCR found that this challenge was unsupported.
As regards the single-round election, under the current law a runoff voting is called only if two candidates get the same number of votes; otherwise, the candidate with most votes is declared winner. Avram had argued that this might result in the election of candidates with only a minority of the total number of votes, which would make the elected authorities nonrepresentative, while a second ballot would obviously grant a majority of votes to one of the two remaining candidates. The CCR ruled that the relevant challenge was not admissible.