Madrid (EFE).- City councils, such as the one in Madrid, begin today the draws to choose the more than 543,000 members, between holders and substitutes, who will make up the polling stations for the elections on July 23 and which, however, They may claim within a period of seven days from the official notification of their obligation.
The plenary sessions of the consistories have until June 28 to carry out these draws in which a president and two members are chosen for each table, in addition to two other substitutes for each of them.
In Madrid, the extraordinary plenary session has been convened at nine in the morning and a computer program will randomly rearrange the data of all the voters assigned to each of the polling stations in the city and will carry out the draw.
An election, which in the case of the capital of Spain, will affect more than 31,000 citizens, if those designated in the previous elections on May 28 are taken into account, when 3,478 polling stations were formed.
For the July 23 elections, the Ministry of the Interior plans to set up around 60,340 polling stations throughout Spain and install some 210,000 ballot boxes and 59,000 booths.
Sweepstakes in small municipalities
Throughout this Thursday there will also be raffles in small municipalities in different provinces, such as Tolosa (Guipúzcoa), with almost 20,000 inhabitants, where citizens will be able to attend the plenary session in an open session starting at 11:00 a.m., or in Langreo (Asturias), which will hold its special session starting at 1:00 p.m.
The Águilas Town Hall, in Murcia, has also summoned its voters first thing in the morning to celebrate the public draw.
In most municipalities, computer applications are used to guarantee the security of the draw, although in small town halls the insaculation can still be in force, the traditional draw with balls in bags.
This will not be the case in Valencia, which will hold its extraordinary plenary session on Monday June 26 and will use an advanced mathematical algorithm system to designate the presidents and members of the 955 polling stations that the city will have.
The Organic Law of the general electoral regime (LOREG) indicates that although the formation of the electoral tables is the responsibility of the municipalities, it must be done under the supervision of the Zone Electoral Boards (JEZ), which also have the last word to approve or not the elections. allegations that may be presented by the designees.
And it is that given the coincidence of the elections with the vacation period, the Central Electoral Board (JEC) has dictated that citizens who are called to the tables can be exempted if they have contracted their vacations before May 30, the date on which published the electoral call, and as long as the zone boards see the full integration of the tables ensured.
The allegations can be made within a period of seven days from the arrival of the notification, which can be extended until July 1, and the zone board will resolve with a limit of five days.
Not everyone enters the draw
Only those citizens with the right to vote who are under 70 years of age and can read and write will enter the draws. From the age of 65 they may manifest their resignation within a period of seven days.
Those who reach the age of majority in the period between the formation of the lists of voters and the vote are excluded, and according to the Law, the positions of president and member cannot be held by persons who present themselves as candidates in the elections.
All of them will be given an instruction manual on their functions.
It is mandatory to be part of a polling station under penalty of imprisonment from three months to one year or a fine of six to twenty-four months and its members will charge about 70 euros, which is the amount that was paid in the last municipal and regional elections, 5 euros more than in the general ones of 2019.