Pamplona (EFE).- The Foral Community will have a total of 997 tables distributed in 362 polling stations for the general elections this Sunday, where the votes cast by mail will also be directed, for which 47,411 applications have been admitted regarding the 15,326 of last May.
This was pointed out at a press conference by the Government delegate in Navarra, José Luis Arasti, who explained the organization of a device that is the responsibility of the General State Administration, whose basic functions are to provide the necessary logistical support to exercise the vote and transmit the participation and counting data on the same day of the elections, for which 6.9 million ballots have been printed.
Asked about the possibility that vacation dates have an impact on the non-appearance of people designated to cover them, the delegate has transferred that “experience tells us that with the two substitutes for each board member there should not be problems.”
With an electoral census of 519,898 people in Navarra, 489,996 of them are Spanish voters residing in Spain and 29,902 are residents abroad, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics. Regarding voting by mail, 47,411 applications have been accepted, of which 39,053 were submitted in person and the rest, 8,358, electronically.
In addition, 22 requests for the “Braille kit” for voting by visually impaired people have been collected and managed, 11 of them in Pamplona.
A coordinated process with the municipalities
After thanking both the work of the staff of the Government Delegation in Navarra and the staff of the Post Office, Arasti has indicated that for weeks the process has been coordinated with all the municipalities of the Foral Community, in order to be able to assign, and where appropriate replace, that non-printed material necessary for voting day such as ballot boxes, booths or signs.
Regarding data transmission, there will be a total of 714 representatives of the General State Administration, of which 201 will cover the 279 tables installed in Pamplona. The remaining 513 will report the 718 tables installed in the rest of Navarra. A total of 321 electronic devices including tablets and mobile phones will be used to transmit the information to the data reception centers.
In addition, during the entire electoral day, at the headquarters of the Government Delegation, there will be qualified personnel to solve any incident that may arise with the representatives of the city councils, the constitution of the tables or the material, in collaboration with the electoral boards.
security device
To coordinate the police presence during election day, a security meeting was held this morning in which the device for Sunday was agreed upon, when nearly 1,400 agents from the different police forces that operate in Navarra will be involved.
Thus, the National Police will provide 250 troops; Civil Guard, 654; Provincial Police, 230; and Pamplona Municipal Police, another 170. They are joined by local police officers from the rest of the Navarrese municipalities, around 70 agents.
The police forces will work to guarantee that the 362 authorized polling stations can open their doors on time and so that the voting day passes normally. As Arasti has explained, it is a question of guaranteeing “the free exercise of the right to vote of the citizens of Navarra”.
In addition, he recalled that a set of preventive, reactive and coordination measures has been established in the event of possible incidents in the field of cybersecurity that may affect the networks and information systems that support the computer systems related to elections, campaigns, public and electoral administrations.
Thus, the security program is in the alert phase until this Friday, when at 8:00 p.m. it will go to the critical phase, designed to provide protection for the end-of-campaign events, the day of reflection on Saturday and the Sunday voting day.
Information and monitoring of results
Arasti has also advanced the different channels of information on the process and the results, so that the Ministry of the Interior has enabled the website elecciones.generales23j.es to offer citizens relevant information on how to exercise the right to vote, the calendar election or the different candidacies that are presented. It also contains material relating to accessibility.
The provisional results can be followed in real time through the web resultados.generales23j.es, as well as in the official APP of the Ministry of the Interior, 23J General Elections 2023, which will be available for iOS and Android devices. Both the website and the application will also offer information on the constitution of the polling stations and the progress of participation.