The country is entering the last week before the parliamentary elections.

The strength of the electoral body that on June 25th will elect the new Parliament is the same as the elections of May 21st, and these are also conducted based on the electoral rolls, as finalized after the first revision of 2023 and include the changes made up to and February 28, 2023.

Specifically, 9,813,595 Greek citizens are registered in the electoral rolls, of which 4,763,264 are men and 5,050,331 are women. They will be invited to exercise their right to vote in one of the 21,634 polling stations established throughout the country. Of these, 21,163 are the basic electoral divisions, 335 pure for heterodominots, 101 mixed heterodominots and 35 that were set up in prisons.

Most voters are likely to vote in the same polling station where they voted in the last election. However, for two reasons it is recommended to update again from the electronic platform of the Ministry of the Interior (www.ypes.gr) “Learn Where You Vote.” The first is related to the nationwide exams. Some school units were excluded from the list of polling stations because they are designated as grading centers and were replaced by others. In the Municipality of Peristeri, for example, instead of the 3rd and 5th Gymnasium, the 1st Primary and the 5th Lyceum will operate respectively.

The second concerns non-residents. In these elections, 146,000 citizens, whose relevant applications had been processed until April 30, 2023, will vote in their place of residence as non-residents, instead of the end of February that was the case in the previous elections. In these two months, more than 30,000 citizens were registered in the relevant special electoral rolls, resulting in the establishment of an additional 103 polling stations.

The parties had until the day before yesterday, Friday, to hand over a sufficient number of their ballots to the deputy governors of the Regional Unity of the seat of each county, in order for the latter to supply the electoral committees of each electoral division. Today, moreover, is the last day to send in the ballots for the non-resident polling stations.

The ballots will not be the same as in May, as this election will be by list, the names of MPs will not be in alphabetical order, as they are elected based on the order of their rank on the ballot. Therefore, it is not required to put a preference cross – after all, there will be no pens on the screens.

In addition to the ballots, next Sunday’s elections are different in the electoral system, as instead of the simple proportional one of May, the enhanced proportional one will apply which gives the first party a staggered bonus of up to 50 seats.

The Greeks abroad

One day earlier, that is, on Saturday, June 24, Greeks abroad who have the right to exercise their right to vote from their place of residence will vote again. Until last Friday, the Ministry of the Interior supplied the necessary number of State ballots to the Greek diplomatic authorities in 35 countries around the world, in order for them to distribute them to the 102 electoral divisions established for this purpose.

25,610 people registered in the special foreign electoral rolls can come to vote in them, i.e. 2,755 more than in the May elections. The overwhelmingly largest number of foreign voters are registered in polling stations of European cities, namely in London (4,414), Brussels (1,716), Amsterdam (1,055), Bern (1,008), Nicosia (893), Paris (836), Berlin (810 ), Munich (731), The Hague (715) and Luxembourg (665).

On the contrary, in cities with a long-standing presence of the Greek element, the electoral power is disproportionate to the local parish, as the conditions set for expatriates to vote from their place of residence (two-year residence in Greece in the last 35 years, submission of a tax return in the current or the previous tax year), excluded a large number of expatriates from this option. For example, from Melbourne, the city with the most Greeks outside of Greece and Cyprus (173,598, based on the 2016 Australian census), the number of voters is only 93. From Sydney, the largest city in Australia, out of approximately 150,000 only 65 residents of Greek origin will vote, while in Toronto, Canada, out of 65,000 Greek speakers, 112 will vote.