Czechs abroad have started voting for the president, they are already voting in South and North America

After 20:00 CET, voting also began on the east coast of the United States, specifically in Washington and New York, and in Ottawa, Canada, and an hour later also in Chicago.

In North and South America, Czech citizens vote today and on Friday, both days from 14:00 to 21:00 local time.

In Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, 72 Czech citizens registered for the Czech presidential election, others can come if they have had a voter’s card issued in the Czech Republic. They also opened a polling station in the Brazilian capital, where twenty Czechs expressed their interest in voting in advance.

“Security is strengthened in the center, sometimes a police helicopter flies over us, but otherwise it’s calm,” Tomáš Loníček, charge d’affaire of the embassy in Brazil, told ČTK, referring to Sunday’s violence in the government district, which is about two kilometers from the embassy.

In New York today, only a few people were waiting for the start of the elections in the Czech National Building in Manhattan, “we expect the biggest rush between four and six, when people finish their work duties”, Consul General Arnošt Kareš told ČTK.

According to his estimation, of the 500 people listed on the voter list, roughly 350 will come.

“We started the elections this year without any problems, even though it has been snowing since morning,” Jana Stará, head of the consular section at the embassy in Ottawa, told ČTK. “We have 200 voters on the list and we received four voter cards,” she added.

After 14:00 local time (21:00 CET), voting also started in the polling booth at the Consulate General in Chicago, in the US state of Illinois. The ČTK consulate said that it has 317 registered voters on a special list, four of whom were given voter ID cards due to their trip to the Czech Republic.

In addition, 16 voters from the Czech Republic took advantage of the option of sending their voter ID cards to the Consulate General in Chicago, and it is expected that more will appear with voter ID cards collected in the Czech Republic.

In the last presidential election in 2018, 109 voters cast their ballots in Chicago in the first round, and 151 in the second.

Of the total of 14,370 citizens worldwide who registered in special voter lists for the election of the president abroad, voters in Latin American countries represent less than four percent, according to the Černín Palace.

More of them registered in advance in Colombia (136), Argentina (102) or Brazil (92), smaller numbers are registered in Mexico (63), Peru (52), Chile (38) or Cuba (two dozen).

The lower number of Czech voters in Latin American countries is explained by Jiří Krátký, special representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for expatriate affairs, mainly by the fact that the vast majority of expatriates in these countries do not have Czech citizenship.

“The vast majority in these areas, for example in Brazil, are descendants of Czechs in the tenth generation,” said Krátký.

The reason for earlier voting in America is the need to ensure that the votes can be counted and the results published immediately after the end of voting in the Czech Republic.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, voting is held at embassies in Santiago de Chile, Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Lima, Mexico City, Havana, the United States in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Washington, and in Canada in Ottawa and in Toronto.

For the first direct elections of the president of the Czech Republic in 2013, 7,200 voters registered abroad, in the previous elections in 2018, there were approximately 9,000 of them on the registration lists, and this year, 14,370 citizens of the Czech Republic registered on these voter lists all over the world.

Five years ago, about 8,900 people voted abroad in the first round and 10,700 voters in the second.