Ciudadanos Propose Campaign to Encourage Election Participation

The Ciudadanos political group is proposing a new campaign in which they intend to, “facilitate the right to vote of more than 70,000 European residents in the province of Alicante”.

“Alicante is the Spanish province with the largest number of voters in the Union, 70,428 people in the last municipal elections, well ahead of Madrid, but we have proof that there are many more people with the right to vote who are not registered and that is the population to which this campaign is directed”, according to the Secretary of Institutional Action of ‘Cs’ in Alicante, César Martínez.

A motion has already been presented to the larger immigrant rich areas, as the initiative will be rolled out by the representatives of the groups in Alicante, Elche, Benidorm, L’Alfàs del Pi, Vila Joiosa, El Campello, La Nucía, Dénia, Torrevieja, Orihuela, San Isidro and Santa Pola.

As the campaign gains momentum, the Ciudadanos leaders hope to motivate, in particular, the British and the French, as well as the Spanish, as these three groups represent the largest three languages spoken in the area, and so the publicity will be geared up to those who understand at least one, subsequently also reaching out to other foreign multilingual residents.

The easiest way of ensuring you are registered to vote is when renewing your padron, at which time you can also ask for your name to be added to the voting register, if it isn’t already. From Ciudadanos, they hope to have the maximum number of registrants on the list before the start of February, when the real battle of the political parties to gain seats in government will begin.

The Cs proposal to create a link in the electronic headquarters of the different town councils to integrate the information and the enumeration area in a clear, useful way, and in different languages, in order to comply with the guidelines of the Central Electoral Census Office in relation to the vote of European citizens. It is also requested that a visible link be enabled in the municipal websites to facilitate all the processes related to this issue (registration, request of vote, etc.).

Cs intends, with this initiative, to simplify the access to information of the voting system to EU citizens so that they identify themselves with the objective of developing greater public opinion and political awareness.

In total, 1,777,989 foreign Europeans live in Spain, people who form the basis of European identity and whose rights include active and passive suffrage in elections to the European Parliament and in the municipal elections in which they reside.