Voters with digital IDs may face delays, Interior Ministry says

While voters with digital IDs may use them to identify themselves at polling stations on Sunday’s general election, they may face delays, an Interior Ministry official has warned.

Michalis Stavrianoudakis, the ministry’s general secretary, said that as the legal officer in each polling station must scan the code on the digital ID so as to confirm the voter’s details and keep the phone until the vote is cast, there may be delays, particularly if the polling station is busy.

For that reason, the legal representative may request the voter to present a conventional ID.

Polling stations will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. but legal officer’s may extend voting hours if there are queues outside, he added.

Stavrianoudakis underlined that that for the first time this year, provision has been made to make the voting process easier for citizens with mobility problems.

If a voter is unable to climb a flight of stairs in a school to their polling station, they can request to vote on the ground floor.

Stavrianoudakis said that there are currently about 10,000 citizens aged 110 and 116 on the electoral roll, although the number of people in that demographic is much lower. Many of these names are of people who died in small villages or islands or are of people who emigrated.

In recent years, the names of people aged over 116 are automatically deleted after one voter was found to be 140 years old, he said.