With their swimsuit on or their suitcase at the door of their house ready to go on vacation, 1,780,061 canaries are called to vote tomorrow, 23-J, in the elections to Cortes Generales, 3% more than in the previous call of 2019, when 1,726,866 canaries could vote. Before enjoying the summer, the Canaries who wish to make use of their right to vote will go through the process of going to the polling place –DNI in hand– and stand in front of the polls. However, before seeing all the ballots in front of you, it is worth answering your questions: How many envelopes are there? Who is presenting? What type of vote can be cast?
The first thing that every voter should know is that they have the possibility of depositing two ballots: one white, which serves to designate future representatives in Congress, and another in sepiawhich allows you to choose between candidates to the Senate. According to the Ministry of the Interior, 947,507 canaries deposited their white ballot to Congress in 2019, which represented a 55.44% participation in the Islands. In the case of the Senate, there were 956,170 voters who deposited their sepia ballot in the Archipelago, with participation standing at 55.37%.
If the ballot is deposited correctly -complies with legal requirements- that vote is counted as valid. In 2019, the valid votes to the Congress of Deputies issued in the Islands were 947,507, 99% of those issued. In the case of the Senate, the valid votes dropped to 927,332, 97% of those deposited. Within those figures blank votes are counted What are they those that occur when an empty envelope is inserted into the ballot box or, in the case of the Senate, when no senator is marked on the ballot.
The blank votes symbolize support for democracy and rejection of candidacies that are presented Besides, have an effect on the electoral result due to the mechanism of the d’Hondt law, which excludes from the process those candidacies of each constituency that have not obtained three percent of the valid votes. Definitely, the more blank votes, the more difficult it is for the candidacies to reach that three percent.
In Canary Islands, he blank vote it’s an unpopular optiononly 7,355 voters deposited their empty envelope to Congress in 2019, which represented 0.78% of the votes cast and is well below the national average of 0.9%. Only Cantabria (0.51%), Catalonia (0.7%), the Basque Country (0.56%) and Murcia (0.73%) favored a blank vote to a lesser extent, while the Valencian Community equaled the Islands.
A different case is that of the null voteswhich are those considered invalid by the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime and are not counted in the percentage of participation. There is many reasons why a ballot is considered invalid: unofficial or altered envelopes were used, the ballot was inserted without an envelope, several ballots from different parties were introduced or erasures were made that were not to mark the candidates. And be careful, because in the case of the Senate there is a common mistake that leads to considering a null vote: mark more candidates than can be chosen in the constituency where the vote is taken.. In 2019, a total of 9,869 canaries cast their invalid vote for Congress, one percent of those delivered. In the Senate, the figure was higher, 28,838 invalid votes were deposited, three percent.
In fact, The Canary Islands is the second autonomous community where the highest number of votes cast at the polls for the Senate end up being invalidated, 3.02%, well above the national average of 2.3%.. Only Andalusia exceeds the Archipelago in invalid votes, with an average of 3.23%. On the contrary, it is in the Basque Country where there is greater use of the action of going to the polling place, since only 1.67% of the votes end up being considered invalid.
Senators and deputies
To prevent a vote from being considered invalid -if that is not what you want- it is important to know how many candidates can be marked on the ballot to the Senate according to constituency. If the voter is from Gran Canaria can mark up to three senators among the ten candidacies that are presented, while in Fuerteventura a senator is chosen from among nine candidacies, and in Lanzarote, one senator out of seven. In this last island, there will finally be no candidacy from the Animalist Party or from Ahora Canarias.
In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, three senators may be elected in the tenerife island, where nine candidacies are presented after finally not being proclaimed that of For a more just world. In The iron and La Gomera They appoint a senator from among seven candidacies and in both Islands the candidacy of the Animalist Party has not finally been proclaimed. And in The Palm a senator is also elected but among nine candidacies.
With the ballot to Congress there are usually fewer problems because nothing should be marked on itthat is, the voter will find already written on it, at most, the name of the eight deputies that are decided in Las Palmas or of the seven that are elected in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, as well as their substitutes. In the province of Tenerife there are nine candidacies for Congress and, after the joint withdrawal of various candidates from vox in the last elections, they have not recovered in time to present a candidacy. Nor will it be possible to vote for a fairer world. Meanwhile, Las Palmas chooses between 11 candidates.
Absentee ballot
Although the vast majority of the Canaries will exercise their right to vote tomorrow, There are already 79,124 islanders who have gone ahead and voted for Correos. These figures imply that 4.4% of the people called to vote in the Islands have already done so. Of these ballots, 43,130 have been delivered to the Las Palmas province and 35,994 in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
