Official ballot for 1st round of Presidential elections unveiled today

Chief Returning Officer Costas Constantinou presented on Tuesday the ballot for the first round of the Presidential Elections that will take place on February 5th, 2023. The ballot includes 14 presidential candidates.

In his statements during the presentation in Nicosia, Constantinou said that the process for the preparation of the ballot for the upcoming Presidential Elections has been completed.

Regarding the ballot paper for the 1st Round, Constantinou said, "after preliminary work done by the Government Printing Office, we concluded with the final sample of the ballot, which was inspected by the representatives of the candidates." As he noted, some suggestions were made for some details, some corrections were made and now we have the final sample of the ballot.

Constantinou said, the Government Printing Office has already been instructed to proceed with the printing process.

The ballot paper includes 14 candidates and its length is the same as previous times due to technological limitations, the size of the paper but also due to the way the printing machines can work.

He clarified that in order to accommodate all the candidates, the width of each candidate's column has been reduced and is approximately 4 centimeters. However, he noted, this was done in such a way that the candidates were visible.

The Chief Returning Officer noted that the order in which the candidates have been placed on the ballot is the one determined by the legislation. He explained that the party candidates or those who represent party combinations were placed at the beginning in alphabetical order of the parties or the combinations they represent, then the independents follow in alphabetical order of the surname of each candidate.