2023-06-07 17:40:00
Voting by mail, which fluctuated between almost 3% and 4% in the last two general elections, is —on the occasion of the July 23 elections— more under scrutiny than ever. On the one hand, the elections will be held on a bridge that will most likely be hot in the middle of summer. In addition, the PP has been casting the suspicion for days that the public company Correos you are not handling it well. And the recent cases of alleged vote-buying in Melilla or Mojácar, which in the end have implicated officials from different parties, have raised all alerts. Correos denies as “hoaxes” that there is a problem of queues or crowds in its offices, although it admits without giving more information a greater influx of requests for votes by mail. Company sources also maintain that the device is prepared to increase staff and hours in order to avoid any incident. The unions, for their part, demand more staff.
The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was president of the Post Office for three years with the government of José María Aznar between 2000 and 2003, has been complaining for days about the extraordinary and advanced call by Pedro Sánchez for the general elections on 23-J . And this despite demanding the electoral advance for months because he believed the cycle of this government was over even before the bad results for the current executive in the local elections of 28-M. Feijóo and the PP are now questioning whether the polls are going to open in the middle of summer during the Santiago bridge. In Feijóo’s PP they are aware that many voters could choose to vote by mail in this case and they do not trust that the current management of that public company, chaired by Juan Manuel Serrano, former chief of staff in Sánchez’s PSOE, is doing everything possible to facilitate such operations in these special circumstances. Feijóo insisted again this Tuesday, during an interview with Onda Cero, in questioning the leadership of that company —it always tries to save the postmen— by demanding that it take extreme care in the face of this electoral device. Also, he demanded a campaign to encourage this type of vote and that the opening hours of his offices be extended, in some cases in the afternoons and even on weekends.
The director and head of External Communication at Correos, Juanjo Castillo, points out that all these warnings have already been taken into account by the company, which has launched a campaign on radio and social networks to promote voting by mail. The corporation expects to formalize up to 5,500 temporary contracts to cover 100% of the vacations of the staff in July and will maintain its usual hours in that month in its 2,389 offices throughout Spain, in addition to enabling exclusive windows for the management of these procedures in the venues where deemed necessary. Correos points out that it will also promote the use of the prior appointment system that already works in 503 of its offices and that when they consider it necessary they will activate “the option of the shift manager for voting by mail, to prioritize attention or channel it to specific positions, to expedite attention and reduce waiting times in the offices during the electoral period”.
In Correos they answer about the evidence of the heat that will presumably be during this electoral campaign that their officials and postmen already work every year in July, whether or not there are elections, and on this occasion they will take exceptional measures if necessary in that regard, as they will also In relation to security, if the Central Electoral Board finally certifies at its meeting this Thursday the obligation to provide the DNI when casting this type of vote, as is now required to request documentation, and as has been the case 28-M for the elections on the autonomous city of Melilla.
The leadership of the company acknowledges that in the week already in force to request the documentation of the vote by mail they have appreciated in general “a greater influx” to their headquarters, but they do not provide either to what extent this demand for voting by mail has increased or presence in their offices. Of course, they reject that there have been crowds or queues on a regular basis. Correos thus confirms that it will not provide official vote-by-mail data until the deadline for processing those requests ends on July 19. The limit to obtain the certification of this type of vote ends on 13-J. The vote can also be requested online with an electronic ID or with the self-signature application of the Ministry of Finance.
The unions have taken advantage of this electoral call to claim an increase in their workforce and remember that in recent years it has suffered a cut of 7,000 people. The federal head of CC OO, Regino Martín Barco, however, did not want to be alarmist about the reliability of a system that works and has asked politicians not to be “irresponsible” or create insecurity. Postal unions estimate that the deficit of postmen is around 4,500. They also criticize the company’s debt, which they estimate at 750 million, and wait for the increase in personnel now to arrive on time and not like in the last elections in May, where a reinforcement of 2,500 troops was announced but finally did not appear. Correos argues that even without this increase it was shown that the service was fulfilled without setbacks.
What affects the most is what happens closer. To not miss anything, subscribe.
subscribe
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#greatest #influx #postal #votes #examines #Correos #face #critical #elections #General #elections #23J #Spain