A total of 2,622,808 citizens, 7% of the electoral roll, have requested to vote by mail on 23-J, according to the official data provided by Correos once the deadline for requesting it ended, the day before yesterday . The majority, almost three out of four, have requested it in person at post offices; 25% requested it on the web with the electronic ID.
It is a historic figure, well above the 1.3 million requests that were processed in the April 2019 general elections, which fell during Easter, or the 997,530 requests when the mid-term elections were repeated after.
It represents a great challenge for Correos. The public company has until tomorrow, Sunday, to deliver the electoral documentation to all these voters. Yesterday there were about 700,000 voters left to serve, Rubén Valdés, sectoral manager of the UGT in Catalonia, told the newspaper.
At the weekend, two thousand offices across the country – all of them in Madrid and Barcelona, ??and especially in tourist areas – will open exceptionally. There will also be extraordinary casts.
Voters have until next Thursday, June 20, to cast their vote. After the vote-buying scandals in May’s municipal elections, the Central Electoral Board has decided that in these elections the voter will have to hand in the vote in person at the post office, after identifying himself with a document.
For days the unions have been complaining about the monumental effort made by Correos employees. The issue has burst into the campaign due to some words by Alberto Nuñez Feijóo in which he seemed to accuse the leadership of Correos (a public company that he presided over during the Aznar government, in 2000-2003) of obstructing the process, if well later he clarified that he was not implying any snobbery.
Those responsible for the CC.OO postal sector. and the UGT, Alberto Pérez and José Manuel Sayagués, yesterday sent a letter to the president of the public company, Juan Manuel Serrano, in which they ask him for an urgent meeting on Monday and accuse him of practicing an “informational closure” that feeds the uncertainty of public opinion and “creates shadows on the postal vote process that we cannot tolerate”. “Added to this is the information we receive from some of our managers, which makes us consider that there may be critical points which, if so, must be detected immediately and resolved”, they warn.
The two majority unions maintain a tough pulse with Serrano, who before reaching the position was chief of staff of the federal executive commission of the PSOE. They accuse him of wanting to “dismantle the universal postal service” and consider the 20,000 reinforcement contracts signed by the company to face the electoral date, which represents a special challenge because it falls in the middle of summer, insufficient, with 20% of the holiday template.
In an attempt to calm spirits, Serrano sent a letter to the 45,000 employees to acknowledge “the long hours of work and weekends without rest.” With a clear allusion to Feijóo, he asks “to stay away from self-interested debates that question the public service or undermine the institutions of our country, such as Correos”.
