Alex Trelinski
SPAIN’S postal service Correos has been granted a half-day extension to the deadline for accepting postal votes ahead of Sunday’s general election.
A record number of people are casting ballots by post due to the election being held in the middle of the summer with a union representative warning that Spaniards tend to ‘leave everything to the last minute’.
The Central Electoral Commission gave the go-ahead on Thursday afternoon for the deadline to be extended to 2.00pm on Friday as opposed to 10.00pm on Thursday, with voters handing over their ballot papers in post offices.
The extension follows some delays in sending out ballots to voters who registered to vote by post, particularly for those who changed the address where they wanted to receive them.
A record 2.6 million people have requested to vote by post after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a surprise election for July 23, when many potential voters had already booked their summer holidays.
Zaida Llano, a postal service union leader, said post offices in holiday hotspots were coming under pressure.
“We Spaniards tend to leave everything to the last minute,” Llano said.
“There are queues in some tourist areas and fewer people in the centres of the big cities.”
READ MORE:
- Record figures as Spain’s Correos mail service delivers over 2.6 million postal votes
- Spain’s Correos mail service seeks to quell concerns about postal votes for July 23 general election
- Unions concerned about low staffing to deal with postal votes for Spain’s general election in July
