Anyone ever voted in Spain?

[Culebronchris]

Does anyone know about the mechanics of voting in Spain?

Stuff like: once you've registered what happens, do they send you a card telling you where to go or do you have to find out, what time do the polls open and close, is it an X in a box or one of the transferable vote systems, are there names on the ballot or just parties, do you need ID to prove you're the registered voter, why do the tables have named staff, where are the results posted blah, blah?

[imc]

Te dejo este enlace con toda la información:

http://www.ine.es/censoe/munaut07/munaut07_menu.htm

[Ben]

From what I can tell once you are empadronado in the area you live, you will be sent a registration form some time before elections are due. On the day of the vote, you will go to the local school that corresponds to your voting area (not sure how you find this out), where you will find a table covered in piles of paper, each pile for one of the parties you can vote for. All the ballot papers are the same colour/size, just have different names on. Usually there is a curtained off booth so if you want to keep your vote secret, you can take several bits of paper into the booth, and come out with one folded one. So you pick your party/person, and take the slip of paper into a room where two people watch over a ballot box. You show them your DNI/NIE, they tick you off a list, and you drop your ballot paper into the box. The papers usually carry very detailed results in the next day or so.

[greytop]

I believe as extranjeros we can only vote in the town council elections.
Finding out what they all stand for is not easy! We get leaflets in Spanish or Valencian but they give very little detail of the policies of the candidates.
Here in Pego the situation is a little confused as the current mayor (who stood as PP candidate) formed a tripartite coalition to get rid of the last one, who is currently serving a jail sentence for ecological misbehaviour and holding an official captive. He also seemed unwilling to put the finance into place before starting projects :eek:. The wife of the jailed one is now the official PP candidate, the current mayor has formed a new party and we also have the usual Valencian nationalists, PSOE etc. The opposition who were independents that formed a coalition with the deposed mayor have never attended council meetings.
If you can get your head round that lot and decide who to vote for, the mechanics of doing so are trivial ;D
Life here never gets boring though, confusing but not boring.

[Culebronchris]

Ah, it's your Mayor who's a bit famous at the moment is it? Not quite on the same scale but last time around in Pinoso the PP won the majority but they didn't win an absolute majority. Some sweetener saw all the candidates elected on the PSOE ticket form a new party and then go into coalition with the PP. This time around we have the PP, PSOE, UCL, BLOC and the last time defectors who I think call themselves the PSD.

I'm quite sure who I'm going to vote for but I asked the question because I wondered if I needed to know more than the name of the party or their first candidate (if I got a transferable vote for instance I might need to learn the names of several candidates).

You're right too about only being able to vote in town elections - that was on the website IMC suggested - which seems a bit odd as I can't vote in town or district elections in the UK. Somehow the European system seems to have cut me out of the district level in either country.

[Ben]

I'm quite sure who I'm going to vote for but I asked the question because I wondered if I needed to know more than the name of the party or their first candidate
I don't think so, I remember the party name being right at the top of each voting slip, then the main candidates name underneath.

[lenox]

I've lived here a long time and, while originally from England, I'd slipped through the cracks and was only allowed to vote in local elections in 1999: Anywhere! The first time I'd had the right to Vote - I was 45!
So I joined an independent list and voted for myself...
Now our town has become famous for its enthusiasm for all things democratic. It's a small town in Southern Guirilandia with some 4500 voters - a third of them foreign.
Thirteen parties are up for election - and a share of the thirteen council jobs.
The boys from the Guinness Record Book have rented an apartment for the occasion.
Rumours here are rife and tempers are flaring.
Three hundred of our voters live in Argentina. They are the grand-sons of people who fled Spain seventy years ago. They remain on our 'padrón' and every four years they receive a letter from 'Cousin Paco' along the lines of 'una vez más me dirigo a Vd...' with the assurance that our pueblo needs their support and please find the enclosed billete to help cover the price of the return stamp and the party papeleta. The letter might end by saying that one day we shall meet in our glorious town and, together, we shall open a can of paella...
In our town, we have several hundred Rumanians. Those on the obras are being told to 'Vote for X or you can eff off back to Suazilandia'.
The mother of one of the candidates is handing out dosh to the indecisos - the 'undecided' (two to three hundred a pop).
In our town, the husband of an Englishwoman (number two on one of the lists) is beaten unconscious by four unknowns outside a bar. Your wife will never be mayoress, they tell him, unkindly (if accurately).
In our town, some Europeans are not on the census, because the rules for the European Vote are complicated and unfair. They may not have received their papers in the mail (official documents can not be sent to a PO Box). Some of them are or were away during the critical periods. They may not vote by postal vote from the extranjero (Spaniards can).
In our town, some Brits on the list of one of the parties have been taken off again - their names were removed from the electoral register by the Town Secretary. In our town, many forms for the europeos were not sent in by the ayuntamiento to the office of the Censo Electoral on time. Many other foreigners have filled in forms asking to vote for, uh, the year 2011. How can forms for 2011 even exist?
The Secretary has been told 'not to do it again'.
In our town, of the thirteen current councillors in office, the seven of them currently running the joint are all 'transfugas'. This means that they stood for one party and later switched to another, often for a suspiciously non-political reason. There were just nine parties in the 2003 election. Coalitions of cuatripartitos are commen here. Quinquapartitos..? Does the word even exist? How about septuapartitos?
In fact, our town halls rarely last for more than a season before being brought down by a 'moción de censura', a coup d'état. Of our current seven transfugas, six are once again running (five in different parties) and, of the three leading members of our current corporation, the first two (ex PSOE) and the third (ex PP) have started their own, new party with the word 'democratico' figuring prominently in the siglas.
In fact, the PP has several 'clones' - parties that are essentially PP, but with other candidates who would never ever pact with their old political buddies. The PSOE has a similar problem, besides being run by a teenager who owns a disco...
In our town, the General Plan (PGOU), which charts the course of the future of the pueblo during the next eight years is a fraction overdue.
The last one dates from 1987.
Nice place though - I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

[greytop]

...
Nice place though - I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.Great stuff! Things seem to happen despite the politics rather than because of them. It is mirrored to some extent in the national situation with regions doing their best to thwart national plans when they don't agree with them.
Perhaps we need a list of Spanish political rules. Here's a start:

1. Never revalue the catastral (property register) on time as no-one will vote for you is their taxes go up.
2. Change the town plan at least every 4 years so you can point out how incompetent the last lot were. Ignore this rule if you are re-elected unless your cousin has bought some land recently ;D
3. Put the party line before the pueblo or they will not put you on the next candidate list.
4. Extract the maximum money from the regional government whilst blaming them for all the problems.
5. Make sure the fiesta & fireworks fund is generous. This stops people thinking too much about problems.

Come to think of it these may be very similar to the local council rules in most other places;D;D