The next general elections on July 23 are registering a profusion of requests to vote by mail from those who expect to be in their vacation spots that day, but they have also led to the proliferation of hoaxes about the voting procedure and the reliability of a process that It is regulated and it is safe.
The Government and the Post Office have set up web pages that explain in detail how and where to exercise the right to active suffrage, since if the interested party is away from their habitual residence, all the necessary documentation will be sent to the address where You will be working or on vacation on Election Day.
That is why it is false that it is impossible to vote by mail in the general elections of 23J, as users of social networks assure with warnings of the type “Are you out on July 23? Well, you don’t vote.”
The process to vote by mail begins with the request for documentation -until July 13-, which can be online or in person and will require the necessary identification in both cases; The form must indicate the postal address to which the interested party wants the electoral documentation to be sent.
This documentation must be received by the interested party personally, clarifies the Ministry of the Interior.
Subsequently, the right to vote can be exercised before July 20 by delivering it to a Post Office, where the citizen must identify himself or, in the case of not being able to attend in person, grant authorization accompanied by a photocopy of the identification document.
The electoral regulations (art. 73 of the LOREG) establish that the Postal Service will keep all correspondence addressed to the polling stations until the day of the vote and will keep a record of the documentation received, which will be available to the electoral boards.
On election day, July 23, once the voting is over and before the scrutiny, the polling station will introduce the ballot envelopes received by mail into the ballot box, and it will be the citizens who make up said polling stations who will publicly count each ballot to the closure of polling stations.
The electoral count in Spain is carried out by hand by the citizens themselves at each polling station, without the participation of companies, software programs or intermediaries, as assured by EFE Verifica sources from the Ministry of the Interior on the occasion of the dissemination of a hoax about this alleged hacking prior to the last municipal and regional elections.
In short, voting by mail is a safe and reliable procedure, and even more so after these guarantees were increased on June 8 when the Central Electoral Board established the necessary identification at the Post Office when casting the vote, following the increase of applications that had been registered in Melilla in the May municipal elections, which aroused suspicions of alleged electoral fraud.
The courts are also investigating alleged cases of electoral fraud linked to vote buying in the Almeria towns of Mojácar and Carboneras, and in the Murcian town of Albudeite; due to coercion and usurpation of votes in the Cáceres municipality of Casares de las Hurdes or due to alleged irregularities in the processing of voting by mail in La Gomera.
