A parliamentary proposal to allow Czech citizens who live abroad to vote by post in elections received strong backing from the Czech government on Wednesday. The government hopes that, if all goes well, Czechs abroad could vote by post for the first time in the 2025 general elections.
Currently, Czechs who live abroad and want to participate in elections have only one option – going to their nearest embassy to cast their ballot. But this can sometimes require a journey of hundreds or even thousands of kilometres, for example in large countries where there is only one embassy, says MP Marek Hilšer.
“For many of them, voting in elections means a journey of 2,000 kilometres to the polling station – and the presidential election often has two rounds. I think those people are discriminated against, to a certain extent, with regards to the universal right to vote.”
But the government hopes that with the introduction of postal voting, this obstacle would be removed, allowing the hundreds of thousands of Czech citizens who have permanent residence abroad to vote far more cheaply and conveniently. According to Hilšer, Czechs abroad represent a significant proportion of the electorate.
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Anna Fodor, Josefína Folprechtová