From Afghanistan to Vietnam, more than 50,000 people outside Latvia will be eligible to vote in the Sept. 17 parliamentary election, according to data compiled by the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (Pilsonības un migrācijas lietu pārvalde, or PMLP) in Rīga.

Polling stations will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time. A total of 77 polling stations will operate outside Latvia in 39 different countries—but neither Afghanistan nor Vietnam are on the list.

The first polling stations to open will be in the eastern Australian cities of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, followed by Adelaide. Next will be the polling station in the Latvian Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, and then the Latvian community center Perth, Australia.

A total of 4,331 Latvian citizens are eligible to vote in Australia, according to PMLP data. In Japan, there are 16 eligible voters.

In all, 50,616 citizens abroad are eligible to vote Sept. 17. That’s about 3.3 percent of all 1.54 million eligible voters. The top three countries in terms of eligible voters are the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, according to the PMLP data.

By the time it is early afternoon in eastern Australia, polling stations will just be opening Latvia, soon to be followed by polling stations in other parts of Europe. Some of the largest populations of eligible voters are found in Europe—for example, 9,465 in the United Kingdom; 5,176 in Germany; 3,708 in Ireland; 1,556 in Sweden, and 1,333 in Estonia. Seven polling stations will be open in the U.K., including one each in Northern Ireland and, for the first time, in Scotland. Five will be open in Germany and two each in Ireland and Sweden.

The last to start voting will be Latvian citizens in North and South America. According to the PMLP data, about a fifth of all eligible voters outside of Latvia—a total of 10,621—are found in the United States. Canada accounts for 3,761 eligible voters. Fifteen polling stations will be open in the U.S. and three will operate in Canada.

In South America, Brazil has 231 eligible voters, followed by Argentina with 155 and Venezuela with 123. However, only one polling station—the Honorary Consulate-General in Sao Paulo, Brazil—will operate in all of South America.

If past elections are an indication, only a fraction of eligible voters abroad will actually cast ballots. The question is whether activity will top that of last year’s Saeima election, when voters abroad turned out in numbers not seen for 15 years.

The last ballots cast by Latvian citizens on Sept. 17 could be in the western U.S. cities of Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A full list of polling station locations outside of Latvia is available as a PDF file on the website of the Central Election Commission in Rīga, www.cvk.lv.

A petition calling for constitutional amendments to make Russian the second official language in Latvia has been submitted to the Central Election Commission in Rīga.

The petition with 12,516 voter signatures was submitted Sept. 9, according to commission spokesperson Kristīne Bērziņa. The commission must now evaluate the petition, a process that could take up to four weeks because of the upcoming Sept. 17 parliamentary election.

The notarized signatures, on 4,405 pages, were submitted by the Russian-oriented “Dzimtā valoda” (Native Language) organization. The group has been gathering signatures for months.

The Latvian constitution recognizes Latvian as the sole state language.

Under Latvian law, amendments to the constitution can be initiated by at least 10,000 voters signing a petition within a one-year period. If the signatures are determined to be valid, the election commission must call for a 30-day period in which additional signatures would be gathered.

The proposed constitutional amendments would affect:

• Paragraph 4, which currently makes Latvian the only state language.
• Paragraph 18, which stipulates the oath made by members of parliament. Under current language, they promise to strengthen Latvian as the only state language.
• Paragraph 21, which states that Latvian is the language of the Saeima.
• Paragraph 101, which states that the official language of local governments is Latvian.
• Paragraph 104, which guarantees people the right to address government bodies and to receive an answer in Latvian.

If at least 10 percent of the number of eligible voters in the last parliamentary election sign on to the initiative, then the Saeima will have to consider the amendments. Because the Sept. 17 election will be the most recent, that means 154,270 signatures will need to be gathered—including those already submitted on the petition.

If the signature drive is successful and the Saeima either amends or rejects the proposed constitutional amendments, then the question would be put to a national referendum. To pass, at least half of all eligible voters would have to cast ballots in favor of the amendments.

In June, an effort to amend the constitution to make Latvian the only language of instruction in public schools fell short of the required number of signatures to force a referendum.