The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the instruction manual for those who will be part of the electoral tables on November 29. The guide, prepared by the Ministry of Interior and reviewed and validated by the Central Electoral Board (JEC) on October 22, explains how to constitute the tables, attend to voters, resolve incidents, and carry out the count.
The next step will arrive this Saturday. The city councils will hold the draws between October 31 and November 4 and the designations must be notified within three days following each draw. The chosen people will also receive the manual and will have seven days from the notification to present a justified and documented reason to the Zone Electoral Board that prevents them from performing the duty.
Those who serve as president or members will receive a stipend of 75 euros, after the increase from 70 euros approved in June. Substitutes will only be entitled to receive it if they become full members during the day. The compensation is received in full regardless of the time during which the position has been held.
Interior will publish 900,000 copies of the manual, organized into three parts that gather essential instructions, incidents, and electoral documentation models. There will be bilingual versions in communities with co-official languages and, in the Aran Valley, it will be distributed in Castilian, Catalan, and Aranese.
Substitutes must also attend at eight
Both full members and substitutes must report to their polling station at 8:00 AM on Sunday, November 29. Interveners may join during the following half hour. Before opening the voting, the table will have to check the ballot boxes and their seals, the booths, the ballots, the envelopes, and the census lists.
Voting will take place from 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM. If at closing time there are people in the premises or at its entrance waiting to vote, they may do so. The manual reminds that voting is "personal" and "non-transferable", although those who cannot read or need support due to a disability may resort to a person they trust.
The guide also includes instructions to guarantee accessibility, with attention to deaf, deafblind, intellectually disabled, or people with reduced mobility. The polling stations must have the material in braille previously requested and communicate any absence to the Zone Electoral Board before the voting begins.
Once in-person voting is finished, the mail-in ballots will be introduced into the ballot boxes, and the members of the polling station and the observers who have the right to do so will vote. The counting will begin with the Congress of Deputies and continue with the Senate.
