It starts: in the federal capital of Vienna, the polling stations for Sunday’s federal presidential elections started on Thursday. Significant logistical effort is required to redesign simple offices, classrooms or kindergarten objects accordingly. Nearly 1,500 polling stations had to be equipped with ballot boxes, voting booths and various furniture.
The responsible city councilor Jürgen Czernhorszky (SPÖ) described the action as “elaborated Tetris”. Most utensils are stored in the municipal logistics center in Floridsdorf. From there, they are now scattered throughout the city, with the time constraints being particularly tight for the school buildings. Because the classrooms are of course needed for school activities before and after the election weekend.
In Vienna, a total of 7,000 employees work on the election process. If you count the honorary assessors, the city council says there are even 12,000 people. The MA 62 Election Department is responsible for the implementation. Nearly 200,000 absentee ballots were recently issued there, as their boss Christine Bachofner explained.
Elections (almost) without Corona rules
The processes are similar for every election, only the 2020 election in Vienna took place under special conditions due to the corona pandemic. There are hardly any requirements this time. The staff checking voters’ IDs is shielded with Plexiglas screens. Masks are only required for infected people when voting in accordance with federal regulations.
Source: Krone
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