The referendum in Romania for changing the Constitution and banning same-sex marriages recorded a very low turnout and will be invalidated.

Update 2: The partial official results presented on Monday morning, October 8, said that 20.96% of the Romanians voted in the referendum (3.77 million), and most of the votes, namely over 91% were in favor of changing the Constitution. Only 6.42% of votes were against and the rest were void.

Update 1: Only 20.4% of the Romanians voted in the referendum, according to official statistics from the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC). Only 3.73 million people went to vote out of a total of 18.28 million registered on the electoral lists. The highest turnout was recorded in Suceava county, in North-Eastern Romania, namely 30.67%, while the lowest rate was in Covasna county, in central Romania, – 8.5%. In Bucharest, the turnout was only 15.7%, below the national average.

The referendum started on Saturday morning, at 7:00, and the polls closed on Sunday evening, at 21:00. Over 30% of the voting-age Romanians, namely almost 5.5 million people, needed to vote in this referendum to have it validated.

Romanians were called to the polls to vote if they agree to changing an article in the Constitutions that states that “family is based on the marriage between spouses” to “family is based on the marriage between a man and a woman”. The initiative came from a group of NGOs that support the traditional family, called the Coalition for Family, and was largely supported by the Romanian Orthodox Church. Read more via Romania Insider