The Central Electoral Board (JEC) has agreed that the postal vote addressed to polling stations in Melilla deposited in mailboxes be guarded by the Zone Electoral Board for the purposes of “the investigations that are being carried out or the claims or resources that may be raised” in relation to the elections that will be held on Sunday and that in the autonomous city are marked by the plot to buy votes by mail.
The JEC has thus responded to a query made by the State Postal and Telegraph Society on the execution of the agreement of the Electoral Board of the Melilla Zone regarding the voting envelopes addressed to the polling stations that appear in the mailboxes with the correspondence ordinary.
Article 73 of the Loreg states that the envelopes containing the postal vote must be sent by certified mail and the Post Office will keep this documentation until the day of the vote, when it must be transferred to the corresponding polling stations.
Taking into account that the votes deposited in the mailboxes “are invalid”, since they are not certified at a Post Office, and to avoid the confusion that may be caused at the polling stations, the JEC agrees that “from this moment on those Vote-by-mail envelopes are delivered by the Post Office staff at the Melilla Zone Electoral Board, for the purposes of their custody, taking into account the investigations that are being carried out or the claims or appeals that may be raised”.
In its agreement, the JEC refers to a report by the president of the Electoral Board of the Melilla Zone, which reveals the high percentage of applications to vote by mail (20.81% of the census); the small number of voters who on May 23 had deposited their vote at the Post Office (16.32%); the agreement of the aforementioned Zone Electoral Board of May 17 demanding the personal identification of the voter for the
delivery of the envelope with the vote by mail, as well as the confirmation of said criterion by the Central Electoral Board on May 18, extending this criterion to the entire national territory regarding the vote by mail destined for the polling stations in the city of Melilla ; and the existence of a judicial investigation by the court of first instance and instruction nº 2 of Melilla in relation to an alleged plot about voting by mail, which has led to the arrest of several people.
