Over 200,000 Greeks residing in Greece and 127 countries abroad have registered for postal voting in the upcoming European elections.
According to the Interior Ministry’s final data, registered voters for postal voting in the upcoming European elections on June 9 reached 202,556.
Of these, 153,322 (75.7 percent) are residents of Greece and 49,234 (24.3 percent) are Greeks residing abroad with voting rights in Greece.
Germany recorded the highest number of registrations, with 9,578 Greeks applying to participate in the European Parliament elections via postal vote.
Close behind was the United Kingdom, with 9,090 Greek voters entering their details on the epistoliki.ypes.gov.gr platform.
The United States followed with 3,857 registrations, then Belgium (3,491), the Netherlands (3,119) and Cyprus (2,808), according to the final tally released by the Foreign Affairs Ministry in the early hours of Tuesday.
Among the registered voters are Greeks residing in countries where participation in national elections in 2023 was not feasible due to the lack of a polling station in their area. Examples include American Samoa, Djibouti, Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, El Salvador and Zambia.
Greece launched the online platform for registration in the electoral roll for postal voting in February.
The initiative aims to streamline the process for Greek citizens to exercise their voting rights in the European Parliament elections and national referendums.
The mail-in system applies to all citizens registered in the electoral rolls who wish to participate in the elections, regardless of their location within or outside the country’s borders.
Greek residents living abroad can only participate in the upcoming European elections through postal voting.
The bill on postal voting was approved for the European elections during a parliamentary vote in late January.
“For the first time in the history of the Greek state, postal voting is introduced,” said Interior Minister Niki Kerameus. “The removal of all practical barriers for our fellow citizens in Greece and abroad to exercise their voting rights. Our democracy is expanding.”
Postal voting in Greece follows voting from country of residence
Announcing postal voting last November, Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, “It is a brave reform, it widens the electorate that participates in elections and is the most powerful answer to abstention and inaction.”
He pointed out that many groups of citizens, including the elderly, students, and seasonal workers far from their place of residence, can participate in the election procedure through the postal vote. Furthermore, he added that the activation of this possibility in the elections for the European Parliament this spring would be followed in the national elections.
The PM said that postal voting is a “brave institutional reform’ that follows his government’s initiative in 2021 to allow the diaspora to vote without having to fly back home.”
Until then, Greece was the only country in Europe—and perhaps the entire Western world— where full citizens living abroad were denied the right to vote in Greek elections from the country of their residence either by casting a ballot at the Greek embassy or through postal voting.