A plan to review Iceland’s election legislation has been published on the government’s consultation website Samráðsgátt. New election legislation that took effect in January of this year caused headaches for smaller municipalities in municipal elections last May. RÚV reported first.
The new legislation tightened requirements for election committee members by ruling out anyone with close connections to candidates in the municipality. Those whose spouse, partner, sibling, child, grandchild, or even certain in-laws were running in the election were disqualified from being on the election committee, which made it a great challenge for municipalities with small populations to staff their election committees.
The article on election committee qualifications is not the only one the legislators intend to change. The plan also considers it necessary to amend the article concerning outer ballot envelopes, which reportedly caused counting delays in the May election.
While the election legislation was written through a process of broad consultation between 2016 and 2020, it has already been amended three times to address deficiencies, including discrepancies in calendar dates.
