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Danish local elections: Covid-19 safety measures to be used on polling day

Authorities in Denmark on Monday confirmed a number of safety measures related to the Covid-19 pandemic will be in place when the country goes to the polls in local elections on Tuesday.

Hand sanitizer, social distancing and outside polling booths will all be features of tomorrow’s municipal and regional elections in Denmark.
Hand sanitizer, social distancing and outside polling booths will all be features of tomorrow’s municipal and regional elections in Denmark. File photo: Claus Fisker/Ritzau Scanpix

Denmark is currently in the midst of a steep wave of new cases of Covid-19, with over 2,000 new cases registered during the last 11 consecutive says and close to 350 people currently admitted to hospital with the virus.

Hand sanitizer, social distancing and outside polling booths will all be features of tomorrow’s municipal and regional elections in an effort to keep turnout high despite the concerning Covid-19 curve, authorities said at a briefing on Monday.

“Municipalities are extremely well prepared and almost all voters are vaccinated. It’s therefore safe and secure to vote tomorrow,” interior minister Kaare Dybvad said at Monday’s briefing, as reported by broadcaster DR.

“In Norway they had a (general) election earlier this year with significantly more restrictions and you could see a small drop in turnout,” the minister noted.

“There’s no reason to be worried about going out and voting but there may be a small drop. We have no estimate of what to expect,” he added.

Over 400,000 foreign residents in Denmark are eligible to vote in the elections.

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The exact provisions in place at individual polling stations are determined by the local municipalities.

In general, local authorities are advised to ensure good distancing between voters, liberal use of hand sanitizer and use of outdoors space.

Voters will be allowed to bring their own pens to fill out ballot papers, in a first for Danish elections.

People who are infected with coronavirus are allowed to vote and are not required to present a valid coronapas, in line with the Danish constitution which ensures everyone who is eligible be allowed to vote.

Those currently infected with Covid-19 are instructed not to enter polling stations but to call a telephone number which will be provided outside of the voting location, broadcaster TV2 reports. Staff wearing PPE will then assist, allowing votes to be cast. This can be done from inside of a car or at an outside voting box.

“I cannot stand here and guarantee that infections won’t occur in connection with the elections. That’s also the case for many other societal activities. But (the elections) can be undertaken safely and properly in relation to the epidemic,” Danish Health Authority director Søren Brostrøm said.

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SYRIA

Danish government split over repatriation of women and children from Syria

Only one of the three parties in Denmark’s coalition government has stated it wants to repatriate women with national connections to Denmark from Kurdish-run prison camps in Syria.

Danish government split over repatriation of women and children from Syria

The Moderate party, one of the junior parties in the coalition, wants Danish children to be repatriated from the al-Roj prison camp in northern Syria, even if it means their mothers are evacuated with them.

The other two parties, the Social Democrats and Liberals (Venstre), still oppose bringing the women back to Denmark.

The two latter parties have stated that they only want to evacuate the children and not the mothers, who are in the camps because they have been sympathisers of the Islamic State (Isis) terror group or spouses of Isis militants.

As such, the government is split over the question of whether to retrieve the five children and three mothers from the camp, where they have now been marooned for several years.

Human rights organisations have in the past expressed concerns over the conditions at the prison camps and Denmark has faced criticism for not evacuating children there who have connections to Denmark.

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Current government policy does not evacuate children from the two camps without their mothers and will not evacuate mothers if their Danish citizenship has been revoked.

A recent headline case saw a mother from the camp win an appeal against a Danish immigration ministry decision to revoke her citizenship, meaning she now has the right to be evacuated. She was expected to be prosecuted by Denmark under terrorism laws on her return to the country.

Denmark’s Scandinavian neighbour Norway on Wednesday repatriated two sisters who went to Syria as teenagers as well as their three children, citing abysmal conditions in the camp where they were housed.

Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, leader of the Moderate party, said at a parliamentary committee hearing on Wednesday that the government will state its agreed position on the issue “soon”, news wire Ritzau reports.

“The government will make a decision on the government’s position on the basis of the updated government policy position. And I expect we will do that soon,” he said.

Rasmussen said in January that the government had asked the relevant authorities to provide up-to-date information related to the Danish children who remain in the camps.

That information is expected to form the “policy position” (beslutningsgrundlag) referred to by Rasmussen in his committee comments.

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