How Ciolacu and Ciucă, apostles of stability, created election chaos with Toni Greblă’s help. The integrity of voting, democracy’s foundation, is in question

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The grand coalition of stability between Romania’s major political parties, PSD (Social Democratic Party) and PNL (National Liberal Party), caused unprecedented chaos in the June 9 elections. There were numerous accusations of fraud, including claims from PSD and PNL candidates who found they had zero votes in their own polling stations. Chaos reigned in several polling stations, with workers waiting for days in scorching heat to hand over vote sacks—posing a severe threat to the credibility of the election. The political blame falls on Marcel Ciolacu, leader of PSD, and Nicolae Ciucă, leader of PNL, for creating incoherent legislation and appointing PSD member Toni Greblă to organize the elections.

Normally, Ciolacu and Ciucă, along with Greblă, should publicly apologize for the election debacle. We should at least see a resignation or dismissal at the top of the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP). Instead of providing legitimate explanations, the three have not even held a clarifying press conference.

The impact of the election chaos is immediate. In some localities, the legitimacy of the newly elected officials is questioned. In others, definitive results are still pending four days after the election. Generally, trust in the integrity of the vote has eroded—a shocking regression for a NATO and EU member country.

The problems stem from two main sources: incoherent legislation, as noted by the VotCorect coalition, and the AEP’s organization of the elections. The AEP is headed by Toni Greblă, a former PSD prefect and parliamentarian with zero experience in election organization.

Here are some legislative issues created by the Ciolacu government and the PSD-PNL majority:

• Combining local and European Parliament elections, complicating the process immensely: differing procedures and records made an already complex counting process even more difficult, according to VotCorect.
• Setting up joint polling stations, despite the different elections.
• Overly complex and cumbersome procedures, leading to delays and chronic fatigue among polling station members.
• Allowing candidate mayors to handle election materials, creating potential illegitimate advantages in some localities.
• Legislative issues regarding ballot distribution and the deadline for submitting lists and electoral materials to electoral offices.
• Confusing legal provisions on vote sack formation, described by an observer as a logistical nightmare for G4Media.
• Exclusion of opposition representatives from polling stations, increasing suspicions of electoral fraud preparation.

Organizational issues largely attributable to the AEP included:

• Contradictory public messages from Toni Greblă: On Sunday, he stated polling station presidents couldn’t leave vote sacks with the police and gendarmerie, then reversed this on Monday.
• Lack of guidance for polling station members, leading to significant data processing issues.
• Mistakes by polling station presidents, who assumed all five vote packages received from the printing house had the same number of ballots based on their equal weight of 1 kilogram, without the exact ballot count marked on each package. This error should have been anticipated and resolved by the AEP by labeling the number of ballots on each package. See more details [here].
• Total lack of transparency: The AEP and Central Electoral Bureau stopped holding 3-4 daily press conferences to explain the electoral process.
• Removal of real-time vote counting from the AEP and BEC websites, making the process less understandable for the general public.

Adding to these systemic issues were numerous fraud accusations, supported by concrete data from some candidates:

• REPER candidates claimed zero votes in some polling stations, even though party candidates had voted there.
• Clotilde Armand (USR) reported missing votes from several stations and filed a complaint with the General Prosecutor’s Office.
• Radu Mihaiu (USR) noted vote reversals between himself and another candidate.
• A PSD candidate in Târgu Lăpuș, losing by 40 votes to a PNL candidate, accused electoral fraud, stating the PNL mayor’s subordinate chaired the Electoral Bureau.
• In Săcueni, Bihor, a vote recount resulted in the UDMR mayor winning by one vote over the initially declared AMT winner.
• Ioan Turc (PNL), who lost the mayoral race in Bistrița, alleged the electoral process was flawed or even fraudulent.

While Toni Greblă is accountable for organizational errors, the political responsibility lies with Ciolacu and Ciucă, who supported him despite opposition from civil society, political opposition in Parliament, and even some PNL leaders.

With these three managing the presidential and parliamentary elections later this year, expect the results to be even more contested and less credible. This is the outcome of a democracy where the PSD-PNL ultra-majority controls all oversight and verification institutions, along with the mainstream media.