Excess of printed envelopes a precaution, says Supreme Election Board president

Turkey's Supreme Election Board (YSK) President Sadi Güven responded to talk that 500 million voting envelopes were ordered for the upcoming elections in 2019.

In a written statement on Friday, Güven stressed that the process of getting the envelopes took a year and so a higher number than needed was ordered as a precaution.

The YSK president shut down the claims making it clear that they actually ordered 357 million envelopes. He explained that the number of envelopes is calculated by taking into account the presidential elections, which can be two rounds, and the local elections. "The decision to print 215 million yellow voting envelopes was made by taking into consideration, the presidential and general elections and a possible second round of the presidential elections," Güven said. Touching upon the technical difficulties of printing, he said that the procedures are lengthy and in the case of a second round of voting, it would not be possible to print new envelopes in that short period of time. Thus he said, 357 million envelopes were printed because as a precaution.

"The bidding process takes around two months, the manufacturing process for the paper takes four months, and it takes about a year to produce the envelopes," he said. Besides the yellow voting envelopes, he said, "Some 12 million orange-colored envelopes were ordered for the provincial council membership elections, 70 million purple-colored envelopes were ordered for the elections of village headmen, 60 million blue ballot envelopes are being made for use in the mayoral elections." According to Güven's statement, representatives of each political party participating in the elections know in advance the amount of voting envelopes the YSK orders and also which provincial, district election board presidencies they will be sent to.

"The entire process of printing and the distribution of envelopes are carried out transparently with the knowledge of political party representatives, and there are no circumstances that cast doubt on the number of elections and the number of voters," he added.