The call for general elections in the middle of the high holiday season will mean testing the vote-by-mail system, which from the day after the announcement of the call by the president, Pedro Sánchez, is registering a higher demand than usual.
Correos, the public company that organizes, together with the National Institute of Statistics (INE) all the logistics of the procedure, does not give figures about the requests it receives to exercise the right through this modality but admits that participation -open in this modality until July 13- will be much higher than in previous calls. In fact, today it has announced that it will reinforce its workforce -it is the public company with the largest number of workers- with 5,500 more people exclusively to deal with the workload that is coming its way in the coming weeks.
The company chaired by Juan Manuel Serrano, former chief of staff of President Pedro Sánchez, assures that with this volume of contracts it will be able to cover 100% of the vacation absences that its staff have scheduled. It is, in any case, a number much lower than that estimated by the unions, which amounted to almost 10,000 people.
The fact that the candidates are calling on their voters to mobilize from the very day of the announcement of the elections, added to the fact that many of the registered voters will be away from their habitual residence on July 23, anticipates a higher participation of the vote by mail than expected. usual. To this is added that in the case of votes from abroad, the system has changed from the one requested to that of permanent residents abroad (CERA).
In calls such as the recent municipal and regional elections, Correos has been able to manage around two million votes. Although there are no official estimates on the activity in the next elections, the INE data on residents away from their homes in the holiday period that goes from July 15 to August 15 indicate that the figure will rise to between 12 and 15 million Spaniards, according to agency sources. And according to these same sources, a figure greater than 10% would be abroad. Not all of them would be voters because the statistics include minors, for example.
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