The greater influx of postal voting examines Correos before a critical election

Postal voting, which in the last two general elections fluctuated between almost 3% and 4%, 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 most likely hot in the middle of summer. In addition, the PP has been throwing the suspicion for days that the public company Correos is not managing it well. And the recent cases of alleged vote buying in Melilla or Mojácar, which in the end have implicated leaders of different parties, have awakened all the alerts. Correos denies as "hoaxes" that there is a problem of queues or crowds in its offices, although it admits without giving more data a greater influx of requests for votes by mail. Company sources also maintain that the device is prepared to increase staff and schedules in order to avoid any incident. The unions, for their part, are demanding more staff.

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was three years president of Correos 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 of the general elections on 23-J. And this despite demanding for months the electoral advance because he believed the cycle of this government ended even before the bad results for the current executive in the local elections of 28-M. Feijóo and the PP now question that the polls will open in the middle of summer during the bridge of Santiago. In the PP of Feijóo they are aware that many voters could choose in this case to vote by mail and do not trust that the current direction of that public company, chaired by Juan Manuel Serrano, former chief of staff in the PSOE of Sánchez, is doing everything possible to facilitate such operations in these special circumstances. Feijóo insisted again on Tuesday, during an interview granted to Onda Cero, in questioning the dome of that company – always trying to save the postmen – by demanding that they take extreme care before this electoral device. He also called for a campaign to encourage this type of vote and to extend the opening hours of its offices, in some cases in the evenings and even on weekends.

The director and head of External Communication of Correos, Juanjo Castillo, points out that all these warnings have already been taken into account by the company, which has launched a campaign on radios and social networks to promote postal voting. The corporation plans to formalize up to 5,500 temporary contracts to cover 100% of the staff holidays in July and will maintain its usual schedules in that month in its 2,389 offices throughout Spain, in addition to enabling exclusive windows for the management of these procedures in the headquarters where it is considered necessary. Correos points out that it will also promote the use of the 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 speed up attention and reduce waits in offices during the electoral period. "

In Correos they respond on the evidence of the heat that will presumably make 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 sense, as they will also do in relation to security if finally the Central Electoral Board certifies in its meeting this Thursday the obligation to provide the DNI at the time of issue that type of vote, as is already required now to request documentation, and as has been the case on 28-M for the elections on the autonomous city of Melilla.

The dome of the company recognizes that in the week already in force to request the documentation of the vote by mail they have appreciated in generic "a greater influx" to their headquarters, but they do not facilitate to what extent that demand for vote by mail has increased or the presence in their offices. Of course, they reject that there have been crowds or queues on a regular basis. Correos thus ratifies that it will not give official data of vote by mail until the deadline to process these requests ends on July 19. The deadline 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 demand 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, has not wanted to be alarmist about the reliability of a system that works and has asked politicians not to be "irresponsible" or generate insecurity. The postal unions estimate that the deficit of postmen is around 4,500. Also, they criticize the debt of the company that they figure at 750 million and wait for the increase in personnel now to arrive on time and not as in the last elections of May, where a reinforcement of 2,500 troops was announced that finally did not appear. Correos argues that even without that increase it was shown that the service was fulfilled without setbacks.

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