Voting for local self-government bodies and municipalities have started in Azerbaijan. At 08:00 local time, 5,846 polling stations in 118 regions were opened throughout the country. The voting will last until 19:00. It can accommodate about 6 million citizens involved in the voter lists.
More than 16,000 candidates are fighting for 8071 localities in 685 municipalities. According to the chairman of the Central Electoral Commission of Azerbaijan, more than half of them were nominated by 23 political parties, the rest, initiative groups and individually.
In order to be elected in local self-government bodies, the candidates need to gather a simple majority of votes. According to the law, there is no lower threshold for the community elections.
At the same time, the participation of voters in the local self-government bodies of the republic is traditionally lower than in the presidential and parliamentary elections. For example, in the previous elections, on December 23, 2019, the participation was less than 33%.
