Electoral boards forced to answer all allegations before election day

The epidemiological scenario of February 14 will be better than expected by the Catalan administration. The Health Department reported on Friday that it calculates that on Sunday there will be 96,000 people in quarantine, between those infected with covid and their contacts, instead of the 130,000 initially foreseen (the Catalan ombudsman spoke of a maximum of 200,000). Even so, the Secretary of Health, Marc Ramentol, has called for caution so that the health system remains alert for the effect that the British variant may have. Despite the improvement of the situation, Ramentol has been critical of the fact that the infected have to turn up to vote. "As a doctor I recommend not breaking quarantine rules," he said, although he admitted that it would be necessary to "think hard" because this would imply violating the right to vote. "I am 38 years old and I have never seen an election in which 90,000 people are told that they cannot vote," he said. The number of infected and confined is better than expected, but the occupation of ICU beds remains alarming, as it is predicted to stand at 650 over the weekend.

The optimism of the Government contrasts with the situation that is being experienced in the zone electoral boards. This Friday, the president of the Electoral Board of Barcelona, Santiago García, pointed out that due to the great volume of allegations, between 2.000 and 3.000 will not have been answered before the election day and, therefore, the concerned will have to turn up to do their electoral duty.

In a matter of hours, the declarations of Santiago García received a response from the Central Electoral Board (JEC). In a resolution, it reminds the zone boards that before February 14th they have to give a reasoned response to all the requests to be exempted from manning the poll stations. To make this possible, the JEC "recalls" that the secretaries of the municipalities included in the judicial district are delegates of the electoral board of the area and, therefore, can, along with the staff of the local entity on which it depends, provide "the assistance that is needed". According to the JEC, the area boards "will have to adopt all the measures they consider necessary to answer the requests before election day" and, in fact, reminds the area boards that they are obliged to do so by law. If no response is received, the request has to be understood as rejected, and those concerned will have to turn up to poll stations.

No problems in "99.9%" of polling stations

Apart from the complication of allowing the infected to vote, the difficulty of manning the polling stations hangs over the upcoming elections. Despite the fact that the number of allegations is increasing day by day and this Thursday there were already more than 30,000, the Catalan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernat Solé, who is charged with organising the elections, has assured that 99.9% of the tables have at least three members and that in 66% of the nine designated people have not presented a request for an exemption or their requests have been rejected. With these forecasts in hand, the Minister pointed out that the current situation is comparable to a normal election in terms of the number of polling stations. And, in addition, he emphasised that if there were any complications, the JEC has allowed the mobilisation of substitutes to other polling stations to cover possible vacancies.

These figures have been seconded by the general director of Citizen Participation and Electoral Processes, Ismael Peña-López, in an interview on Tv3's Planta Baixa. In spite of admitting that "there can be unforeseen events", he has emphasised that almost all the polling stations already had the minimum of three members. In part, the Government is also confident because they have a 40,000 substitutes then can move around to cover no-shows. Thus, Peña-López has once again claimed that the proclamation of the results would not be postponed and that they will be announced on Sunday. The only thing that could happen, he said, is that the final results will be known later, because the postal vote has to be added and the counting has to be done with gloves as an anticovid measure. He did warn that if any polling station could not be set up before 10 a.m. it would be suspended and voters would have to vote 48 hours later. According to him, if there were ten polling stations left to be set up, it would be considered a "statistical error" and would not be a problem. It would affect, according to his calculations, some 10,000 people, who would have to vote on Tuesday, and their votes would be added to the expat vote, which is always counted after election day.

One in four polling station members has been tested for antigens

While 2,000 people are unsure as to whether they will out if their claim has been accepted before Sunday, 30% of the members who have accepted to be at a polling station have taken an antigen test. Of the first results that are known, only 0.55% have tested positive. The fact that the percentage of positives is much lower than that of the general population, which is 5.45%, is explained by the fact that they are people who, in principal, had no symptoms. Although the bulk of tests have been carried out this Friday, Ramentol has reported that tomorrow the members of poll stations that have not been able to take the antigen test can go directly to their health center to do it.