This July 23, so much paper will no longer be used to print polling station manuals. The Central Electoral Board (JEC) has approved that those people who are part of the tables in the general elections can download the manual via a QR code on their mobile phones. This measure was proposed to the Board by the Ministry of the Interior.
At the meeting held on Wednesday in Congress, the General Directorate of Internal Policy addressed the Central Electoral Board to grant approval to the methods of downloading virtual manuals in the face of “the problems and difficulties derived from the lack of availability of paper.” The Board has given the green light to the use of QR codes and has also confirmed that those chosen to integrate the tables will be sent to a link from the Ministry of the Interior to download the manual as a pdf.
In the agreement between the agencies, the JEC has established that it will be the Government delegations and sub-delegations that will provide these download methods to the municipalities and the Zone Electoral Boards.
Although the manuals can be consulted in digital format, the Ministry of the Interior will have to provide three paper copies of these instructions to each polling station on the day of the general elections. So that they can be used on voting day.
Similarly, the ministry will have to send another three copies for each polling station to the municipalities so that the president and the members of the polling stations can request them and have access to them before July 23. Those in charge of supervising the voting and counting the votes will have to commit to returning them if they are not part of the table in the end.
The JEC had already accepted last week a first request from the General Directorate of Internal Policy for the download of manuals in pdf format. However, the member José Miguel Serrano Ruiz-Calderón, who was elected to the JEC at the proposal of Vox, cast a private vote.
Serrano argued that, since the board members “do not receive complex training” it was pertinent that they at least have access to a paper document with the instructions they must follow. “The succession of elections and the possible difficulties with the supply of paper do not seem like a sufficient reason to change the system that has not been discussed up to now,” the member commented.
Miguel Serrano also complained that they want to “optimize” the use of paper in manuals but not in other phases of the electoral process such as advertisements by official organizations, which he considers “stifling.” He has assessed that this type of measure requires a “thought-out plan” since “the last thing that should be restricted is the usual information that polling station members receive.”
