The Central Electoral Board dismisses the recount of all invalid votes in Madrid that the PSOE requested

A polling station of the Ortega y Gasset Institute, in Madrid, on July 23. JP Gandul (EFE)

There will be no recount of invalid votes in Madrid, as the PSOE intended after the counting of the suffrage of residents abroad for the general elections of 23-J, which resulted in a loss of deputy from the Socialists in favor of the PP. The Socialist Party first appealed to the Provincial Electoral Board of Madrid asking to review all the 30,302 annulled votes in the 7,118 tables of the Community of Madrid, but on July 30 it rejected the request. Faced with this refusal, the PSOE appealed to the Central Electoral Board (JEC), which this Monday also said no to the petition.

In its written agreement, the JEC makes the PSOE ugly that its appeal does not provide a specific argument to justify that the invalid votes be counted again. Thus, the text states that the plaintiff “does not allege any irregularity in the general scrutiny to justify the repetition that he requests, but limits himself to invoking his right to review the null vote indicating the closeness in the number of necessary votes (the allocation of the last seat in Madrid depended on only 1,323 votes) to modify the distribution of seats in the Madrid constituency”.

The Board considers that “an argument of this nature cannot be accepted, since it is contrary to the procedure established in the LOREG (Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime) and would make it unfeasible to comply with the legally established deadlines.”

The JEC argues that in previous resolutions it has warned that the scrutiny requests have to deal with “specific claims” and that, therefore, “a general challenge of the scrutiny without invoking specific irregularities” is not admissible. The Socialists used as a precedent a resolution of the Constitutional Court of 2015, which allowed the general review of the votes annulled to the electoral candidacy of the Ganemos-Izquierda Unida-Los Verdes coalition in Badajoz for the regional elections on May 24, 2015.

The Board has now responded that in that case the plaintiffs argued that those votes were annulled for a specific reason: a defect in the printing of the envelopes and ballots, while in the case of Madrid “no reason or indication of irregularity is given.” ” and that the plaintiff “does not even (…) question the regularity of the procedure”.

The resolution of the JEC concludes that the socialist demand “seeks to turn the Provincial Electoral Board into a universal review table for all the votes declared invalid by all the tables of the constituency without citing a specific irregularity that justifies this examination.” And it abounds by stating that such a measure “lacks constitutional and legal anchoring” because “it would radically disfigure the procedure provided for in Loreg” and, furthermore, it would prevent compliance with the deadlines established by law and “could even affect the constitution of the Chambers” , next August 17.

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On July 28, the PP won the PSOE one last seat for Madrid that depended on the votes cast by Spaniards residing abroad. After the count of the votes corresponding to the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA), the popular ones added their deputy number 137 and the PSOE dropped one and remained at 121. The seat danced by a difference of only 1,323 votes. After adding the CERA votes, in Madrid the PP garnered 41.09% of the votes, 1,463,112 votes and 16 seats, while the PSOE achieved 28.21%, 1,004,567 votes and 10 deputies.

“In the end, the difference between the PP and PSOE is so small that we believe that we must be as guaranteed as possible and that no vote can be left out for not making a little more effort,” Socialist sources said then when justifying their recourse to the JEC .

Now, the Socialists can appeal the agreement of this Monday of the Central Electoral Board, but already through a contentious-administrative appeal, before the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court and within a period of two months.

In all of Spain, including in-person votes by residents and by mail, the invalid vote amounted to 261,078 on June 23, 1.05% of the total votes, more than in the previous general elections, in November 2019, when there were 249,487 (1.01% of all those issued). In the Community of Madrid, there were 30,305 (0.84% ​​of the total vote cast) in July of this year and 28,317 (0.78%) in the penultimate elections to Cortes.

The general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, He has described this Monday as a “tantrum” the failed appeal of the PSOE to the Central Electoral Board that requested the review of more than 30,000 invalid votes in the Madrid constituency. With the dismissal of the appeal, the result of the July 23 elections becomes practically final. “It is time for (the Socialists) to recognize that the PP has won and has done so with an advantage of 16 seats,” Gamarra said on his X account, formerly known as Twitter. Addressing the PSOE, he has exhorted: “Assume it and let’s face the future of Spain with a lone PP government.”

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