Orihuela´s councillor for International residents, Martina Scheurer, has revealed the final figures for foreigners registered to vote on the Orihuela Costa, which for statistical purposes includes Entrenaranjos, shortly to be published by the Spanish National Statistics Institute, the INE.
After the deadline at the end of the year, there are now a total of 5,259 foreigners who are on the voters list. The figure is a slight increase from the 4,733 previously, but is still widely under representing the international community and their right to vote in the elections in May.
As previously reported, there was an information table set up in the town hall providing details on how to ensure you are on the voters list. That campaign resulted in just fewer than 200 additional registrations. We also know that the INE carried out a postal campaign, whereas they sent a simple return-to-register form to around 3,500 people. Therefore, that campaign has yielded around 300 additional voter registrations, not even 10% of those targeted.
We also believe that there are some 3,200 Spanish people eligible to vote, clearly showing how the foreign population is actually more represented, but with the collective figure of around 8,500 residents, that is a considerable shortfall of the 35,000 residents, and so only a quarter of the population is actually now registered and eligible to vote.
The figure gets even more depressing when one takes into account that of those who took the trouble to register their right to vote, many still don´t exercise that right on the day. With voter turnout around 50%, the total number of votes from the Orihuela Costa could well be as little as just over 4,000, of which 2,500 are the foreign residents, across all European nationalities. In the last elections, albeit they were for European representation, the voter turnout was just 43%.
With the manner in which votes are counted, the concluding figure could make it even more difficult for the smaller parties to gain council seats this year. As Scheurer explained, “in the last elections, we, the green party, got around 3,500 votes, and we managed to get 3 councillors with that”, and whilst explaining the minimum threshold, continuing, “a party needs 5% of the votes to get their first councillor, so that was around 1,500 votes. Any figure less than that would be a wasted vote as there is no way they could get a seat”.
Although they cannot be directly transposed, and there has been a strong growth with political groups such as Podemos, in the European elections the PP and PSOE gained 45% and 23% of the votes respectively. Therefore, collectively, 68% of the votes went to the two major parties, thus leaving just 32% to share across all other political groups. Therefore, in the transposed case of Orihuela Costa, a total of 2,720 votes to share across up to 10 different groups. Within the foreign residents, the total number of voters, assuming the same share to the PP and PSOE, would be just 1,683 votes. The conclusion being that unless all those remaining choose to vote for the same party, the chance of proper representation within the foreign community of the Orihuela Costa is zero.
Of course this is all based on statistical data, opinion polls and conjecture, because the reality is change can still happen. In fact, “Cambiemos Orihuela”, was the title given to an information conference held in the María Moliner library in Orihuela on Friday, in which the biggest contenders of the smaller groups came together to affirm their commitment to work towards a single goal of creating a combined force to tackle the historic majority of the bigger two parties.
As we previously reported, Podemos are a force now to be reckoned with in Orihuela and the Orihuela Costa, and with the Los Verdes and Izquierda Unida combining under the same electoral pact, they are a force indeed. But if you want to enforce change, there are still the smaller groups to consider, such as the historically coastal centric CLARO group, or their former partners CLR, and others.
Either way, there are two key messages to remember in the run up to the elections, it is now more important than ever that everybody researches what each political group is offering and what they will and can do for the Orihuela Costa, perhaps based on promises made or indeed broken, but the second message is also vital, the message that if you have registered your right to vote, you must exercise that right. With so many votes at risk of being wasted, this election seems set to be one of the most exciting and contested representations of democracy and never has it been more important to take part, as the political landscape is about to change forever and one way or another, you can be part of that change.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/46373/
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