The final results of the general elections are awaiting the vote of residents abroad, the so-called CERA vote, an acronym for Census of Absent Residents Abroad, which will begin to be counted as of this Friday. The provincial electoral boards will then conclude the general scrutiny of the votes by including the ballots that the 2.3 million Spaniards who reside in other countries and are registered in the census have been able to cast.
These general elections have been the first in which the requested vote was no longer in force, the suffrage modality that governed between 2011 and 2022 for citizens living abroad, which forced the voter to request their vote in advance.
In the elections of November 10, 2019, in which CERA voters begged for their right to vote, only 226,050 vote requests were accepted, so it is expected that, in the elections of 23-J, the vote cast be older.
In this way, some seats could change sign after adding the ballots issued by this group. PP sources stress that he could change a seat in Madrid that would be taken from the PSOE, another in Girona that would be beaten by Junts and a last seat in Cantabria from Vox.
Spaniards registered abroad received electoral documentation from the provincial delegations of the Electoral Census Office without the need to request it in advance and deposited their ballots in embassies and consulates until July 20, although they could also cast their votes by mail until the 18th of the same month.
Once the voting period has ended, the CERA envelopes and ballots have been transferred by electoral shipment, by diplomatic bag, to an office set up in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for this procedure, which is in charge of forwarding them to the corresponding electoral boards.
