By Anne Kay
PEOPLE have been asking me why they are receiving so many election papers in their post box, all with similar white envelopes. I have explained that it is the custom for the different parties to send round the voting papers already prepared with their party's papers so that voters do not need to waste time on voting day looking for the correct paper at the voting station. The British are not used to voting with the proportional system with closed lists. When you go to your polling station in England you are given a piece of paper with the names of the individual candidates and you mark a cross against the name you want to choose. Here you DO NOT HAVE TO MARK anything, but rather choose the WHITE LIST of candidates being presented by the party you want to choose, place it in the WHITE ENVELOPE and then give that envelope to the head of the voting table. When he has checked the identity with the identity card, Spanish driving licence or passport, (the one used to register on the census) he will then put the envelope in the ballot box. Readers will have seen that there can be several parties, eight in Calvia for instance, and they each have a separate list with the name of the party visible at the top, together with a logo of the party. It is therefore not really necessary to use one of the envelopes that you have received at home. Instead you can choose one at the voting station, either openly by picking one up from the table or in secret if you prefer to go into the booth. Voting takes place between 9a.m. and 8p.m. after which the postal votes are placed in the ballot box, together with the votes by the official tellers. Then the counting begins. First they will count the municipal votes and then they will count the autonomous votes. Non Spanish EU citizens can only vote for the municipal candidates. The results must then have the Ley d'Hondt applied to them. This is a mathematical formula to ascertain the number of councillors for each party. Victor d'Hondt, a Belgian mathematician conceived this formula in 1899, which divides the votes in such a way to produce an easy way of ascertaining the division, although politicians admit that the system is not purely proportional. However it is the system used in several countries and also for the European Elections. Here you can see an example with the results of the 1999 local elections for 13 councillors in Andratx.
The process is to create a table starting with the original number of votes won by each party, and then divide these by 2, by 3, by 4, by 5 and so on, up to the number of councillors there are in a particular town. There is also a rule that if a party does not obtain 5% of the votes, then they cannot opt for the division, but this amount is usually the natural point of exclusion anyway. Then you mark off the 13 highest numbers, and these represent the division. PP: 1655 - 827 - 551 - 413 - 331 - 275 - 236 PSOE: 925 462 - 308 - 231 UM: 737 - 368 245 - 184 ALA: 466 - 233 EU/EV: 172.
PP won 6 seats, PSOE won 3, UM won 3, ALA won 466 and EU/EV did not win any.
So I hope you all understand the system now, and make sure you know how to do it on Sunday.
May the best party win!!