Is residence abroad a reason why some Czechs are excluded from voting in national elections? No, that's not true: According to Czech law, 18 years of age and Czech citizenship are decisive for the right to vote. The country where people live is not the deciding factor. It would be illegal to exclude from voting people who live abroad.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on January 6, 2024. The text overlay (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff) read:
Only those living permanently in the CR should vote in the CR and not abroad. You don't live here, you don't vote here.
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Jan 10 13:36:54 2024 UTC)
In the Czech Republic, anyone who has Czech citizenship and is at least 18 has the right to vote (archived here). People living abroad can cast their vote at their embassies, but they must be registered there or have a voting card. A Google search (archived here) with the phrase in Czech "mÄ›li by ÄŒeÅ¡i žÃjÃcà v cizinÄ› ztratit volebnà právo," translated by Lead Stories staff as "should Czechs living abroad be deprived of the right to vote," yielded no relevant results.
The public debate is not about the right to vote for people living abroad, but about the introduction of postal voting for them, a measure that the government has already agreed to (archived here) and that Parliament is due to vote on in early in 2024 (archived here).
The measure has met with resistance from the opposition, particularly the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party, led by populist leader Tomio Okamura, who described the measure as an "extraordinary danger" to democracy (archived here). A similar argument is often used by pro-Russian or anti-government trolls spreading Kremlin propaganda on social media platforms, such as here (archived here). In the last parliamentary elections in 2021, voters abroad favored (archived here) the liberal coalition of the Pirate Party and the Party of Mayors and Independents (STAN) and other ruling parties.
Lead Stories has previously debunked the claim that a junior member of the ruling coalition wants to introduce postal voting to stay in power.
Postal voting is a legal method of submitting ballot papers in several countries. It is available for certain persons on request in most member states of the European Union (archived here), for example for citizens living abroad. Postal voting is also available in other countries such as the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Australia.
