Vote by mail, the great controversy of the Spanish elections

The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, suffered a resounding defeat in the local and regional elections in May, losing power in the autonomous communities, cities and towns. People are upset with his management, based on a socialist policy supported by a communist party. Many believe that he hasn't defended the unity of Spain. As a direct consequence of this disaster, he called for general elections to take place on an unusual date: July 23. On that day, millions of Spaniards will be enjoying their summer vacation, far from their places of residence. In order to vote, they have had to apply to vote by mail, a system that has caused serious problems two days before the elections.

The Spanish post office Correos is to blame for these problems. This publicly owned company that has been around for more than three centuries has filed to provide ballots to many Spaniards who requested to vote by mail. Correos was supposed to make sure voters received their ballots in time while ensuring they be processed in a secure way.

Correos had to ask the Central Electoral Board (the group in charge of ensuring the transparency of the electoral process and supervising the performance of the Electoral Census Office) to postpone the deadline for Spaniards to vote by mail. It took time to deliver the mail-in ballots to the applicants. Some have yet to receive theirs.

Correos requested that the mail-in ballot delivery date be delayed from July 20 at 14:00 to July 21. There have been a total of 2,622,808 applicants and 161,524 have still not been able to vote.