Anyone else prevented from voting?

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Superplonk
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Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Sun May 25, 2014 6:10 pm

I registered more than seven years ago and have voted several times since. Despite no change of address in that time my (Spanish) wife was allowed to vote, but I was told I should have reregistered every two years. I'm assuming that it's illegal to make laws that affect EU citizens and not the locals.
The chap at the polling station told me he only had three foreigners on his list. He said that Coin had 18 such "mesas". By rough arithmetic I come up with 54 foreign voters in a town that has somewhere around 1500 EU citizens on the padron. No one ever contacted me to encourage me to comply with any new rules. Something stinks.

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby littleeak » Sun May 25, 2014 7:39 pm

We never receive voting cards despite being registered at the Ayuntamiento but my parents, who live in another town, always do. A friend told me that you just have to go along with your I.D. and they look you up on the list of foreign residents but I've not tried it!

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Sun May 25, 2014 8:35 pm

My point is that the list has been seriously pruned!

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knowal
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby knowal » Sun May 25, 2014 8:51 pm

Superplonk wrote:My point is that the list has been seriously pruned!
In our area the National Police produce a list of people on the local padron who have they say should be reviewed. In practice, this is fair, because they flag up people who have left the country.
Our town hall has been making visits, using the policia local, to check whether people are still living here.
They came to my house a while back asking if our grown up kids were still here. They were not, and they will be removed from the padron. Removed from the padron means removed from the electoral list.
I'm not sure of the legality of how they are treating extranjeros in Spain, but in the UK a person has to register on the electoral register once a year.
The town hall should have checked that you still live here before removing you from the list.

Superplonk
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Sun May 25, 2014 9:05 pm

The town hall should have checked that you still live here before removing you from the list.
Given that the wife is still on the list, this is particularly true. I've tweeted the mayor to see what he thinks. As a local politician he should be quite concerned to see 1000 voters disappear- unless he knows something about it.

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby gus-lopez » Mon May 26, 2014 9:25 pm

For EU citizens it is 5 yearly renewals & they have to write to you to tell you. That is the law. Any request by you for a padron resets the 5 year period. I.E automatically renews.

Non-eu have to renew every 2 years & there is no requirement to tell them.
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Superplonk
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Mon May 26, 2014 9:35 pm

Well no one has ever written to me. The town hall said that the rule is now two years and that it's the fault of INE in Malaga for cutting me off. I'm not sure who gets the blame for not telling me about it. To reregister they said they couldn't just tick the box that says "all details unchanged" or "all details same as spouse's", but that I need to go back with my green form, libro de familia and the landlord's ibi bill.
I've now contacted INE and the top four political parties to complain. No replies so far.

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Unicorn » Mon May 26, 2014 11:48 pm

I have sent my passport to be renewed into the UK Passport Office Black Hole.
I went off to vote yesterday and had with me a notarized copy of the passport and a woman at the voting office said they would not accept it. A man (voting staff) there said they should but she held firm. Luckily I could shower her with Resident green paper, a driving permeso, previous res card and so she relented and I voted.
However, I am surprised she would not accept the notarized copy as I thought they were legal. When stopped and papers checked by the Guardia, they accepted it.
Any comments?

gus-lopez
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby gus-lopez » Tue May 27, 2014 7:13 am

Superplonk wrote:Well no one has ever written to me. The town hall said that the rule is now two years and that it's the fault of INE in Malaga for cutting me off. I'm not sure who gets the blame for not telling me about it. To reregister they said they couldn't just tick the box that says "all details unchanged" or "all details same as spouse's", but that I need to go back with my green form, libro de familia and the landlord's ibi bill.
I've now contacted INE and the top four political parties to complain. No replies so far.
No it is 5 years for EU citizens.
i was in our local council recently for a new padron & it is posted on all the windows.5 years EU, 2 years non-EU, & that is what is in the legislation.
Todos somos Lorca.

Superplonk
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Tue May 27, 2014 8:06 am

I would fall foul of 2 or 5 years, but the bit that really gets my goat is that they didn't try to contact me. They have my address and phone number. Can we say for sure that the same rules require them to check before deleting names? Also, is the town hall right that it's the INE that does it, or is it their own fault?

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Mowser » Tue May 27, 2014 8:14 am

We became resident in 2004. Our first vote was in the local elections in 2007. Apart from asking for a "volante" a couple of times, we haven't been asked to re-register for voting. We both voted on Sunday without a hitch.
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knowal
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby knowal » Tue May 27, 2014 8:26 am

Unicorn wrote: However, I am surprised she would not accept the notarized copy as I thought they were legal. When stopped and papers checked by the Guardia, they accepted it.
Any comments?
She didn't like the look of you, is a xenophobe who doesn't like extranjeros, especially those with a horn on their head, could have been any fickle reason that ran through her tiny power crazed mind! :wtf:

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Unicorn » Tue May 27, 2014 10:50 am

It my two heads each with a horn that gives it away every time! :roll:

Anyway, I did get to vote.

Superplonk
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Wed Jun 04, 2014 8:23 am

I just thought I'd resurrect this thread to report that ten days after contacting PP, PSOE, UPyD, IU, INE and the mayor of Coin on this subject not one of them has replied. It's almost like it was deliberate....
It definitely seems that different regions and towns have their own policies about 2/5 years or whether to let people know they are about to be disenfranchised. I'm sure there is actually one set of rules for everyone, but it is not being enforced and the authorities are happy with things being that way.

It has also just occurred to me that I must be included in those 90,000 Brits who left the country last year, despite not going anywhere, paying taxes and holding an Andalucian health card. Now that Spain no longer performs a proper census, INE just counts the numbers on the padron and reports that as the population. If people who still live here have been removed from the list it's not their problem. Don't the IMF and ECB require member nations to keep proper statistics?

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Alcalaina » Sat Jun 07, 2014 9:57 am

Superplonk wrote: It has also just occurred to me that I must be included in those 90,000 Brits who left the country last year, despite not going anywhere, paying taxes and holding an Andalucian health card. Now that Spain no longer performs a proper census, INE just counts the numbers on the padron and reports that as the population. If people who still live here have been removed from the list it's not their problem. Don't the IMF and ECB require member nations to keep proper statistics?
I do sympathise but if all those Brits who returned to their homeland bothered to remove themselves from the padrón before they left, the ayuntamientos wouldn't have to do this retrospective cleaning.

Traditionally in Spain it is the citizen's responsibility to make sure they are on the list, not the Town Hall's. Most places have modernised their systems but there are plenty that haven't. Same with paying IBI, car tax etc, in our pueblo you don't get reminders and you don't get chased; you just get a nasty shock when you come to sell the house or car!

And no, the IMF and ECB don't require this - why should they? It goes agains the principle of freedom of movement within the EU!

Superplonk
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Sat Jun 07, 2014 6:50 pm

Argentina certainly got into trouble with the IMF for making up their inflation figures. If a country is in receipt of massive subsidies and has a national debt close to 100% of GDP then those who supply the cash would like to be confident of their economic analysis.

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Mariposa » Wed Jun 11, 2014 8:34 pm

We applied for a postal vote as we were going on holiday. We then received a letter from the census authority in Granada that we were not registered to vote. I rang them and discovered that although registered for municipal elections, we were not for the European one. Apparently you have to sign up for both! O dear another vote for Podemos lost...

Superplonk
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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby Superplonk » Wed Jun 11, 2014 9:01 pm

And another mystery from me: Today, with the help of a couple of digital certificates, I accessed the padron and voter records on the INE website. I was surprised to see that the wife and I were both listed as voters but neither of us was on the padron. No idea what that means as one is supposed to be based on the other. Presumably it confirms that I've been diddled out of my vote and that the pair of us will have to devote more of our lives to getting it all sorted out.

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Re: Anyone else prevented from voting?

Postby ebbnflow » Mon May 25, 2015 7:47 pm

Another shot in the arm for this thread.

We moved our apadriamento along with our house move from one village to another in January last year. We made clear to the ayuntamiento that we wanted our votes moved as well.

Along comes the vote yesterday so we trudge off to the voting centre. My name is there, no problem but my wife's and daughter's are not.
Hmmm, just in case we trudge back to our previous village. Bingo, wife still has her vote there but not our daughter. No vote for her then.

Today I popped into our town hall to see what could have gone wrong. I told the man in charge of our problem, he looked us up and said we were all registered to vote in the one, more recent, village. Obviously though, this was not the case as recounted above.

He then said that the problem must be with the central register, he is unable to access said records, certainly cannot apply for change to be made to it and my only way to correct it is;

wait for the next vote (european I guess) and approach the "presidente del mesa" at the voting centre to make a "reclamacion" about our voting status.

Well, I must say that smells of BS to me! Does anyone know the real procedure to sort out the above administrative error?


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