The PSOE will control the telematic vote of its deputies and will know who does not support Arnaldo

The vote for the four magistrates of the Constitutional Court is secret, but the leadership of the Socialist Group will be able to know the ballot that its 120 deputies have issued. Therefore, you will know if there are any of your honorable Members who have broken with voting discipline —that is, if they have not typed in the name of the controversial Enrique Arnaldo— and could, eventually, sanction them.

The expectation is maximum in the face of the votes for the renewal of three of the institutions that the Government and the PP agreed upon: the Constitutional Court, the Court of Accounts and the Ombudsman (the Spanish Agency for Data Protection does not go through the validation of the plenary session, only by the Justice Commission). The 350 deputies had until this Thursday at 1:00 p.m. to cast their vote completely telematically. Under normal circumstances, the voting of the constitutional bodies is done by ballot and ballot box, but the services of the Chamber warned that, due to the covid, it should be done remotely, as it must happen in long votes (such as those of Budgets), which require parliamentarians to spend a lot of time together in their seats. Then, the Socialist Group launched the protocol that, according to sources from the management and also several consulted deputies, is used whenever there is a telematic vote: everyone must send a receipt of their ballot, and in that PDF document it appears what they have voted .

When a deputy votes remotely, he usually ticks the boxes for yes, no, or abstention. But when it comes to the election of organs, you have to write the names of the candidates who want to vote. In this case, up to four names for the TC and up to six for the Court of Accounts, while for the Defender they may type the name of the applicant or vote blank. The vote is secret, so that the Presidency of Congress will not know what their honorable Members have voted, nor will it publish the usual statement of the rest of the votes.

Another thing is what will happen in the Socialist Group. This Wednesday, he sent voting instructions to his deputies. And in them, to which this newspaper had access, they are asked to issue the proof of vote and to send it to their assistant. Once he verifies that the vote was cast correctly, he must send confirmation of it to Belén Fernández Casero, from Cáceres, deputy spokesperson of the group, indicating the name of the parliamentarian, if the vote was done without problems or the “incidence” that it was found.

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But that voucher contains the meaning of the vote. The deputy, when he completes his ballot, can ask the electronic system of Congress to generate the receipt in PDF. And in it, as several parliamentarians taught this newspaper, the names of the candidates for the TC, the TCu and the Ombudsman do appear. In this way, the Socialist Group will be able to know how many and who of its members have not written the name of Enrique Arnaldo or Concha Espejel, the two names for the TC proposed by the PP.

In the spotlight is Odón Elorza. He was the one who, in the Appointments Consultative Commission, last week, starred in a very harsh interrogation of Arnaldo, detailing the long relationship with the PP.