Around 20 per cent of Lithuania’s voting population do not rate candidates in party lists, delfi.lt wrote on 28 September.
According to the “Vilniaus Diena” newspaper, the 2008 parliamentary election and the 2011 municipality election, statistics show that around 80 per cent of voting ballots had the rating fields filled in.
According to Zenonas Vaigauskas, the chairman of the General Election Committee (VRK), the opportunity to rate the candidates is not usually taken by those who vote for the smaller parties.
“Why do they not rate candidates? It is hard to say. Maybe the citizens think that they are protesting by doing so. Another reason may be that perhaps they simply do not understand the system. If the citizens do not want to rate – and it is not mandatory – it is important to remember, that in such cases the queue of candidates on list will be decided by other voters, who did rate the candidates,” – commented the VRK chairman.
Currently it is only possible to rate the candidates of a single party.
However, according to the publication, the VRK chairman said that most people would benefit from a slightly modified system, where they could rate candidates from different parties. This means that they would first choose the people, and only then the party.
Translated by Darius Mikulėnas
Edited by Nicola Lavey
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