Did Romanian authorities, loyal to "globalists," prevent the Romanian diaspora from voting in the 2019 presidential election by defrauding the postal voting process? No, there's no evidence of that: Romanian citizens were able to vote by correspondence in 2019, but only around 41,000 people opted to do so, out of almost 6 million members of the diaspora.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok by user @pichaku.picaku on May 30, 2023. The video was captioned:
The Turkish people were saved by massive voting. In 2024, we need to do the same for Romania.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
According to the Permanent Electoral Authority's 2019 election report, around 41,000 Romanians chose to send in their votes electronically, which the head of the authority deemed "a failure." Constantin-Florin Mituletu-Buica said he had expected more Romanians to choose the correspondence voting option, so as to not crowd the polling stations.
However, the votes that were sent in were counted and registered before the physical voting took place. If people didn't receive a confirmation email a day before the voting, they could be redirected to the polls. According to Digi24, out of over 41.000 mail ballots, the electoral authority had already validated more than 15.000 at the end of the day on November 6, 2019, two days before the physical election took place.
Far-right Romanian senator Diana Sosoaca, known for spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories, is claiming the same thing will happen in 2024 when Romania is faced with four different elections: local, parliamentary, presidential and for the European Parliament.
The Permanent Electoral Authority in Romania and platforms like VotCorect.ro or VotStrainatate.ro informed citizens about the process of voting by correspondence in the run-up to the 2019 presidential election and throughout the election. The electoral authority said they've already begun preparations for the upcoming elections in Romania.
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Jun 2 12:33:54 2023 UTC)
