Madrid (EFE).- The scrutiny of the elections this Sunday began after 8:00 p.m. In addition to the face-to-face votes deposited in the ballot box, the members of the 60,314 polling stations throughout Spain will have to count the 2.4 million votes by mail, which in these elections have reached a record number in democracy.
But how do you count the vote by mail?
From post offices to tables
The transfer of postal votes to the polling stations, their inclusion in the ballot boxes and their subsequent counting is a process regulated by law.
When a citizen deposits their vote in the Post Office, all the documentation, including the ballot -in a sealed envelope- and the certificate of their registration in the census are kept by the postal company until the day of the elections.
The transfer of postal votes to the locations where the voters are registered is a logistical challenge, especially during the last days before the elections so that all the ballots arrive on time at their destination.
Arrival at the polling stations
The transfer of postal votes to the 22,562 electoral locations is also the responsibility of Correos, which has established a special logistics deployment of more than 14,000 professionals to take the envelopes and ballots to the polling stations.
Just as the polls open, at 9 in the morning, a first group of employees delivered the votes by mail to the voters who belong to each of the polling stations.
A second group of employees has transferred the votes that have been arriving at their offices throughout the day until the polls have closed, which will normally belong to those voters who waited at the last minute to deliver them to the Post Office.
To prevent a citizen from being able to vote twice, in the census lists a letter “C” appears next to the voters who have requested to exercise their right to vote by post, so that they are not allowed to vote in person.
They enter the polls
It is now, once the polling stations are closed, when the presidents and members of the tables introduce the postal votes into the ballot boxes, after verifying that the voters are registered in the census. In no case are the envelopes containing the ballots opened.
If the correspondence addressed to the polling station lacks documentation or does not contain the registration certificate, that vote is not considered valid and is destroyed.
Once valid postal ballots have been entered into the polls and voters have been entered on the census rolls, counting begins.
Postmen keep working
The work of the postmen does not end with the transfer of the votes to the polling stations.
When the scrutiny of each one of the tables is finished, the results and the electoral documentation are distributed in three envelopes.
The first two are transferred by the president of the polling station, guarded by a police officer, to the nearest magistrate or peace court and a third is delivered to a Post Office employee so that the postal company can send it to the Electoral Board for official scrutiny after a few days.