The PSOE says that the Electoral Board of Madrid violated the Constitution by denying the review of the null vote

He calculates that, by validating 4.43% of the 30,200 invalid ballots, he would 'recover' the seat that the PP won abroad

MADRID, 1 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The PSOE accuses the Provincial Electoral Board of Madrid of having infringed the electoral regulations and of violating the Constitution by denying its request to review all the votes consigned as null in this constituency in the last general elections. The Socialists made this claim during the general scrutiny after learning that the foreign vote count gave the PP one more deputy for Madrid to the detriment of the PSOE.

In the appeal that has been presented to the Central Electoral Board against the decision adopted last Sunday by the provincial board, the Socialists ask the highest arbitration body to revoke the agreement of the provincial board and agree to the review of all those votes.

The PSOE calculates that it needs 1,341 valid votes, which means 4.43% of the 30,241 invalid votes to 'recover' the seat that passed into the hands of the PP. According to what he explains, when the scrutiny was carried out only allowed for the protested null votes, some 100 votes were reviewed, giving 32 ballots from the PSOE and 24 from the PP as good.

"These data allow us to apply a proportionality rule that supposes that every 100 votes, eight could be subtracted from the PP, in such a way that applied to the remaining 30,141, a positive difference could be produced for the PSOE of 2,411 votes, almost more than 1,000 of the necessary ones," they add. For this reason, he requests "a reasoned review" because it is not a question, he says, of "unreasonable or impossible percentages", but rather that "something more than 4 votes per 100" could affect the electoral result.

The provincial board argued that attending to the request of the PSOE would lead to an "unjustifiable delay" that would affect "disproportionately" the performance of the general count, which did not deduce that the review of invalid votes would alter "the differences that give rise to the final result" and that the PSOE's claim had "a minimal chance of success if only the votes for its candidacy were exclusively reviewed and validated".

In addition, it considered that the petition was not "legally viable", since the electoral board "has the function of reviewing with full powers the incidents that appear in the minutes of the electoral tables", and that the jurisprudence refers only to the "opening of the envelopes to verify the content of the minutes", which had already been done.

In short, the Madrid electoral board rejected the PSOE's request, considering it "unfounded speculation, based on statistical evaluations."

In their appeal, collected by Europa Pres, the socialists refer to several sentences, one of them from the Constitutional Court of 2015 in which they recall that "there is no precept in the LOREG that expressly prohibits claiming the review of invalid votes" and that, in fact, if the law orders the preservation of those votes (all the votes that have been denied validity, and not only those that have been the subject of some claim) it must be, by force, to allow revision at some later time and examination of those votes; of all, even if they had not been challenged before the tables".

The PSOE also argues that both the arbitration body and the jurisprudence have recognized that since the polling stations are made up of "citizens without knowledge of Law", the "possibility of error in the assessment of nullity is very high". the law guarantees that invalid votes are kept for review "before those who do have the legal capacity to validate the votes", that is, the Zone and Provincial Boards.

In his opinion, if the scrutiny were limited to the review of the incidents claimed in the minutes, it would be limiting "the review system only to those who have the capacity to make claims in all the polling stations and organize it to be able to verify it, breaking the equality of arms between all political formations".

For this reason, it concludes that the refusal to carry out the review of the invalid votes recorded in the tally sheets is also "contrary to the essential principles" of the electoral procedure: "transparency and equality of arms."

In addition, the PSOE accuses the provincial council of violating the right to political participation of both deputy 11 and the party. "It is obvious that what is at stake is a lot, and in particular the fundamental right of this deputy," he argues.

For all these reasons, the PSOE asks the JEC to attend to its request and immediately summon again the representatives of the political formations competing in the elections to carry out a new general scrutiny in accordance with the procedure established in article 105 of the LOREG, "according to the opening of all the invalid votes consigned in the polling stations/sections and that are contained in envelopes no. 1 thereof."

In this context, the recurring formation states that the scrutiny session includes the review of the invalid votes that are part of that documentation (envelopes one) and not only those that were "protested" if there can be "a transcendental incidence in the result ".

In addition, the PSOE defends that its request is as "transcendent and justified" as the one made by the PP on July 30 when it urged the review of all invalid votes in Cantabria "being also at a short distance from a Vox deputy ". The Socialists point out, on the one hand, that the PP ended up withdrawing that claim "most likely, so that it would not interfere in the decision" on the appeal raised by them in Madrid.

And, on the other, they point out that this claim by the PP was "doomed to failure due to a question of form, since the request was made once the general scrutiny had been carried out and not within it, as the PSOE did in Madrid, since it his request when the general scrutiny had not yet taken place see

He also cites the case of Alcorcón where, at the request of the PP, there was a review of all the invalid votes cast on May 28, since this formation was 41 votes away from obtaining one more councilor with respect to 1,051 votes (3.3 % of the votes) and takes the opportunity to ask the JEC to unify criteria in this regard.

"It is not possible to act differently between the Zone Electoral Boards and the Provincial Electoral Boards, with respect to the provincial scrutinies, only on the principle that the numbers to be related are greater, and, consequently, as the Agreement indicates, this supposes " unjustifiable delay" or "disproportionate delay", therefore, fundamental rights cannot depend on the scope of the process, and must be the same for all of them", he asserts.