The Second Chamber of the Constitutional Court (TC) has agreed this Tuesday to admit for processing the appeal presented by the PSOE against the decision of the Supreme Court (TS) to reject its request to review some 30,000 invalid votes from the general elections of July 23. in the province of Madrid and to annul the proclamation of PP leader Carlos García Adanero as elected deputy.
According to legal sources, the Chamber – with a progressive majority – has adopted the decision by four votes in favor and two against. The judges of the conservative bloc Enrique Arnaldo and César Tolosa have announced that they will cast a private vote. The presentation on the matter corresponded to the Constitutional professor and former senior official of Monlcloa, Laura Díaz.
The appeal for electoral protection has been admitted for processing due to its special constitutional significance and because the majority of the Chamber understood that there was a need to clarify the specific case in a ruling as there is no jurisprudence on a similar issue.
Legal sources have explained that the Constitutional Court plans to rule on the merits of the appeal next week. The appeal filed by the PSOE must be responded to in accordance with the electoral deadlines which, according to sources from the TC, in this case expire next Tuesday.
For their part, the dissenting judges have announced that they will cast a dissenting vote upon understanding that there is no minimum plausibility or indication of the violation of a fundamental right that would allow admission for processing.
The socialists denounce that the proclamation as elected deputy of García Adanero would have “cut off” the possibility of proclaiming the socialist Javier Rodríguez Palacios, number 11 on the Madrid lists. It should be remembered that, if they got one more seat, the PSOE would have a hypothetical investiture of Pedro Sánchez easier because they would no longer need a vote in favor of Junts, but one abstention would suffice.
The magistrates will evaluate the arguments of the PSOE, which alleged that the Supreme Court’s refusal had violated the fundamental right to passive suffrage by “carrying out a restrictive interpretation” of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG), “with respect to the conduct of the general scrutiny and the possibility of opening all the null votes recorded”.
In its appeal, the PSOE stressed that “the small vote necessary for this party to obtain its 11th deputy for the Madrid constituency with respect to the null vote declared in the minutes of the electoral tables prevents it from being considered that an abusive exercise of the right”.
The party went before the court of guarantees after the Supreme Court considered that “the mere numerical difference in the results alleged in this case (1,200 votes) is not a sufficient basis for the review.”
The judges of the Vacation Chamber considered that no “arithmetic data or reliable statistical calculations had been provided that would allow verifying, even hypothetically, the relevance of the vote review in the final result and in the attribution of the contested seat.”
The Supreme Court, contrary to the criteria of the Prosecutor’s Office, said that it was not possible to accept the argument put forward by the PSOE and stressed that it could not be accepted that in this case “the mere adjustment of the result” required the “oversight or verification of the actions of each Table in the scope of its functions”.
