Jarmila Balážová: What would voting by mail bring for Czech Roma living abroad?

Would Czech Romani voters themselves take advantage of this opportunity? Given their experiences voting in past elections from abroad, would they consider it a benefit, or not?

I asked Gabriela Hrabaňová, who has long lived in Belgium, from where she also votes, as well as Martin Grinvalský, who used to vote regularly in the Czech Republic but for whom the travel to a consulate in Great Britain or Spain means an economic loss and many hours of travel. Gabriela Müller has had to travel hours by car or train in both Switzerland and the United States, where she currently lives with her husband and daughter, to vote, and she gave her opinion on this issue too.

Voting by mail, if finally adopted, could increase voter turnout overall and affect an estimated half a million Czechs living abroad, including tens of thousands of Roma who understandably vote for various parties, but do reflect the statistics on voting choices made by Czechs living abroad – in other words, they rarely support extremist parties. It is exactly lawmakers with the “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) party, in the opposition, who have spoken most loudly against the opportunity to vote by mail, which would distinctly save Czech citizens living abroad (including students, workers, etc.) finances and time.

Those legislators have warned against possible abuses of this opportunity, but the experiences of other voters living abroad who have such an option absolutely does not confirm those warnings, and many of the Romani people whom I interviewed also do not perceive such risks as serious. On the contrary, they believe this option would increase participation by Roma living abroad, at least those who are middle-aged and younger.

“I believe that Roma who live abroad would find that this step could simplify their being able to express their political opinions and take advantage of the opportunity to influence what is happening in the country where their loved ones live, one that is close to our hearts, too, and I base that on my experience communicating as the director of the European Roma Grassroots Organizations Network with many Romani people living in many countries both in Europe and elsewhere,” said Gabriela Hrabaňová. She herself studied international relations and diplomacy and considers every vote to be essential.

“I have been living and working in Belgium for more than 10 years, I have a daughter who naturally speaks Czech excellently, and she knows where she comes from because we regularly visit there although she was born in Belgium. Each election in the Czech Republic is understandably very important to me because it concerns my family and friends. I vote directly at the Czech Embassy, but I welcome the opportunity to vote by mail, because it will spare other people a lot of time and money, voting will become much easier for them,” Hrabaňová said.

Currently, voting from abroad happens at Czech consulates or embassies. Not only do the voters have to be registered on a special list to do so or have their voter identification set up, they chiefly have to make it to the consulate or embassy in person.

If traveling to the consulate or embassy involves hours of travel, that is frequently a problem. Martin Grinvalský lived for a year in Spain and has spent the last eight years in Great Britain, where he has been living and working as a bartender while studying, so he has lots of experience with this.

“I am completing my bachelor’s at the SAE Institute of Digital Filmmaking, so naturally I have to work somewhere during my studies. I am not indifferent to the future of the country where I was born, where my family and many of my friends live, but right now, voting means complications, it’s a burden. It is only possible to vote at the embassy in London or Manchester, but I live in Glasgow. It’s hours of travel and financial loss. I regret it, because at home I was used to always voting, but living here I haven’t been. This decidedly does not just affect me. I unequivocally welcome the option to vote by mail and I believe voter turnout will increase without any big risks. At the end of the day it will be sorted, those fears were never substantiated for other countries which allow voting by mail,” Grinvalský said.

The bill would make it possible for those participating in the Erasmus student exchange program or others to vote by mail as well. For many years, the ROMEA organization has been supporting Romani students, both financially and in terms of their motivation, many of whom have interned or studied abroad and for whom the passage of this bill into law would be nothing but beneficial.

Many Romani people also left the Czech Republic years ago for Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland and other countries where both they and their children have managed to complete their studies and start businesses – but they have never stopped being interested in what is happening in the Czech Republic. My next interviewee belongs to a different group, however.

Gabriela Müller fell in love as a student and spent many years systematically preparing to work abroad. Once she and her husband graduated, they emigrated to Switzerland, where they have been living for 17 years and have a daughter.

More than two years ago, Müller’s husband got another job offer. It meant a challenge, a change, a move, but also a new beginning and an overcoming of obstacles for the family as a whole.

Müller herself had started studying in a different field in Switzerland than she had in the Czech Republic and through her own diligence had already become a schoolteacher there. I have known her since she was 18, when I met her and her then-boyfriend, now her husband.

We have been in touch ever since. One does not meet such a hardworking, honest, responsible person every day.

Müller is also honest and responsible when it comes to voting. “My husband and I have lived abroad since 2005. We spent 17 years in Switzerland and we have been in the United States for two years now, in the state of North Carolina. We consider voting by mail to be a brilliant idea, because it simplifies our options for exercising our right to vote. It will save us six hours of travel to Washington, D.C. When we lived in Switzerland, we had to choose between either traveling four hours to Bern or six hours back to the Czech Republic, to the Ore Mountains – which we often did, combining it with a visit to our parents and our families. However, we couldn’t always manage it, we were both working and studying, our daughter was attending school. The Swiss make voting by mail possible. We have dual citizenship, so ballots are sent to us by the Swiss consulate, by mail, with return envelopes, and that’s how we have an opportunity to vote in referenda and influence what happens in the country where we spent most of our adult lives. It would be fine if we could also do that in relation to our homeland, the place where we were born, where we have our roots, our families, our friends. Actually, we are responsible voters, we study the party programs, we consider the options, we want to be active as citizens and we are,” says Müller, who graduated in social work in the Czech Republic before earning a master’s in coaching and therapy in Switzerland; currently she is a private German language instructor in the United States.

In the context of excluded, impoverished localities, vote-buying in the Czech Republic is sometimes reported, especially during local elections. The efforts of politicians (or the lobbyists who work for them) to win votes in exchange for a couple of hundred crowns are difficult to prove, however, and involve a negligible number of people.

The current bill would make it possible to vote by mail in elections to the European Parliament, the Czech Parliament, and the presidency, so it poses much less of a risk in that regard. Let’s be honest: At least for the first few years, those voters who care about their vote so much that they have been willing to suffer financial loss and inconvenience to travel for several hours to cast their ballots are those who would take advantage of voting by mail.

There is genuinely not much of a risk of such voters being manipulated in some way. Compared to the advantages that the introduction of this option would yield, such a risk is marginal.

Moreover, if the opportunity to vote by mail is passed into law and proves viable in practice, the road will open up for voting online. In the 21st century, to be one of four countries for which voting by mail from abroad is not possible isn’t much to be proud of.