With the voting of Greeks abroad, the curtain on the parliamentary elections of June opened today.

The 25,610 Greeks who are registered in the special electoral rolls abroad and can vote from their place of residence, go to the polls, today Saturday, one day before the elections in the Greek territory.

The way of conducting the voting is similar to that which is valid and applied inside the country. The duration of voting in all polling stations is from 7.00 to 19.00 local time.

Australia’s two polling stations (one each in Melbourne and Sydney) are the first to open to voters. In these, the election process is underway from 00:00 midnight Greek time and ends at 12:00 noon, as the country of kangaroos is +7 hours behind Greece. Accordingly, the last ballots will be closed in the three cities on the west coast of North America, where it was formed by an electoral division, namely in Los Angeles and San Francisco, USA, and Vancouver, Canada. Given that we are -10 hours apart with these cities, the polls there will open at 17:00 today and close at 05:00 on Sunday morning.

Voting takes place in a total of 102 polling stations established in 85 cities in 35 countries around the world. The polling stations were set up mainly in the buildings of embassies and consulates of the Greek authorities, but also in offices of holy temples of the Greek Orthodox Church and buildings or shops of Greek communities, associations or other Greek organizations, as well as schools. For the establishment of a polling station in a city, a condition was the registration of at least 40 voters. In those cities where the required number was not filled, the voters exercise their right to vote in another city or even country.

The overwhelmingly largest number of foreign voters are registered in electoral divisions 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).

For the exact address of the polling station where they vote, interested parties can be informed from the digital platform “Learn where you are voting” on the website of the Ministry of the Interior, or from the telephone lines 2131361500 and 2131313800, which operate from 08:00 to at 20:00 Greek time.

Voters come to their polling station with an identity document such as their Greek identity card or Greek passport. The identification of voters can also be done using the digital identity that is accessible through the government portal https://wallet.gov.gr.

Greek sailors can also vote in the electoral divisions abroad, even if they are not included in the special electoral lists abroad of the electoral divisions. However, they are required to have with them, in addition to an identity card or passport, their Greek naval brochure.

The State party ballots are used for electors’ voting and therefore no preference crosses are needed next to candidate names, regardless of whether these elections are conducted by list. However, any “crossed” ballots will be counted as valid. The votes recorded in the foreign polling stations are counted in the general result for the distribution of the total number of seats allocated to each party, as well as in the result for the distribution of State seats of each party.

When the polls are closed, the electoral commissions do not sort ballots and extract the result of the voting in each electoral division. As happened in the May elections, they will limit themselves to counting the files, without opening them and informing the Ministry of the Interior about the number of voters. The electoral bags with the expatriates’ ballots will be airlifted to the Greek capital and the Athens Court of Appeal, where they will be opened and the votes will be counted when the polls close in Greek territory.