The Government of the Generalitat approved yesterday the decree that regulates the next elections to the Catalan chambers of commerce, with a remarkable novelty. The delegation of vote in order to avoid identity theft is expressly prohibited.
As already happened in 2019, you can only vote digitally. It can be done in person, by going to the voting venues, or remotely. If it is in person, there is no problem to control the identity by checking the documents that prove it. If it is exercised remotely, more doubts arise. For this reason, Indra, the company that won the award for the voting platform, is finalizing an identity verification and authentication system. In addition, the mandatory verification of the platform by the Agència de Ciberseguretat de Catalunya is established.
With the approval of the decree, the machinery for the elections is set in motion, which will initially be held in September and will culminate in November with the constitution of the plenary sessions and the election of president in the 13 Catalan chambers.
A new decree has been necessary, because the previous one was invalidated first by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) and later by the Supreme Court. He was appealed by the company Staff Pavillion for not having completed the public information process.
With the new regulations, the Business Department headed by Roger Torrent intends to reinforce the legal certainty of both the chambers and the voters. It is also clarified that the votes for candidates who withdraw will count as blank votes and in the event that there is a vacancy among the elected members, it will be filled with the next candidate with the most votes in their corresponding sector, also called epigraph.
In the case of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, 52 of the 60 plenary members will be elected by vote (twelve more than in 2019). Another 6 will come from the Foment and Pimec employers, and the remaining two will be direct access in exchange for an economic contribution.
To try to simplify the procedure, the maximum number of members for each economic sector is increased from three to five. With this, the aim is to reduce the number of subsectors that until now was applied in many of the headings, although that decision is left in the hands of each chamber.
The text also details the measures that the Central Electoral Board (JEC) must take if an auditor confirms that the voting guarantees have not been respected.
