Nearly 1.9 million people, 72% of the total number of voters who have requested it, have already managed to vote by mail, according to calculations by the CC.OO unions. and UGT, the two largest in the postal sector. They also estimate that 300,000 voters have already been given the electoral documentation to be able to do so, while another 375,000 have already been notified at their homes to pick up the ballots at the nearest office, after the distributors have not been able to deliver them in hand in at least two attempts, as required by law.
Some 47,000 voters are still waiting to receive this documentation, which is already being distributed. This morning Correos announced that throughout today it would finish sending the ballots to all citizens who have requested this type of vote.
Thursday, July 20, is the deadline to vote by mail, a procedure that can be carried out at any post office once you have the electoral documentation and for which it is essential to carry an official identification document.
Voters who have not yet received their ballots can check at this address the status of sending their electoral documentation by entering their ID and the locator they were given when requesting a vote by mail.
The representatives of CC.OO. and UGT have met today with the director of the Post Office, Juan Manuel Serrano, who was appointed to the position by the Government of Pedro Sánchez. In a statement, the unions claim that it has been thanks to the efforts of the workers of the public company that the electoral campaign has been “saved”, and they accuse the leadership of “lack of foresight in the implementation” of reinforcement measures . “The constitutional right of the citizen has been guaranteed thanks to the efforts of a dedicated staff with a vocation for public service,” they affirm. They also reproach Serrano for having decreed an “unacceptable information blackout.”
The public company has been in the spotlight during this campaign due to the avalanche of requests to vote remotely in this call. More than 2.6 million people have requested this modality of voting on 23-J, a figure that far exceeds the record so far, the 1.4 million requests that were reached in the general elections of June 26, 2016 .
There was also the aggravating circumstance that 20% of the Post Office staff was on vacation, for which reason the company has been forced to formalize 20,000 reinforcement contracts, to establish extraordinary deliveries on weekends and to extend the opening hours of the Offices. Correos workers receive incentives for their participation in the electoral campaign, whether it is for the delivery of electoral propaganda, the census card or the documentation to be able to vote remotely.
For next Sunday’s election day, Correos has planned a special logistical deployment, made up of more than 14,000 professionals, including delivery personnel, offices and treatment centers, who will be in charge of delivering the votes cast by mail at the polling stations.
The candidate of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was director of the Post Office in 2000-2003, during the government of José María Aznar, has repeatedly criticized during the campaign the alleged mismanagement that the leadership of the company was carrying out.
