“I voted thinking of a lot of people who are quiet, honest and hard working and who have for long not felt represented,” said Dan as he voted in his home town of Făgăraș in Transylvania on Sunday. “I voted for a change that brings prosperity and not one that brings adventure and discouragement of foreign investment.”
Simion voted in a small town outside Bucharest, with his political patron, the banned ultranationalist former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu.
He claimed he had heard official exit pollsters had been told to release data showing the race was neck-and-neck when they give their first indication of the results at 9 p.m. He has also accused Moldova of participating in a fraud by getting more people to vote in the election as expats.
He said his AUR party will conduct a parallel count of the votes across the country in an effort to make sure the election is fair. He announced a WhatsApp number for members of the public to report examples if they fear of the identities of dead friends or relatives have been used for vote fraud.
Romania’s constitutional court in December controversially canceled the presidential election amid fears of foreign interference after Georgescu came from nowhere to lead after the first round — although many questions remain unanswered about what happened.
This weekend’s vote is the rerun of that aborted contest. Simion has described the cancellation of last year’s election as a “coup d’etat.” On Sunday, he said: “It is the most important thing today to return to democracy, the vote of the people and to restore the faith of the Romanian people in democracy.”
