Albaida del Aljarafe electoral fraud judge summons senior Post Office official over suspicious PSOE votes

Specifically, the instructor cited the Director of Operations of the National Post and Telegraph Company as a witness for next February 2 at the judicial headquarters of Sanlúcar la Mayor due to the fact that the participation of two employees of the public company seems key in the development of the alleged electoral fraud in this case, in which facts are also studied that could constitute crimes of identity theft, falsification of documents, administrative prevarication, negotiations prohibited to civil servants or abuse in the exercise of their function. In this procedure, the current the socialist mayor José Manuel Gelohis predecessor, Soledad Cabezón, former Congress deputy and former European parliamentarian; and six other people linked to local socialism, including two members of the current local government team, municipal employees or postal workers.

The case includes a report from the Civil Guard which shows that of the 115 people hired in 2019 by the municipal administration, twenty voted by mail. In addition, it should be noted that many of these people who voted by mail were registered at the same address, that is, they were entire families. For its part, Izquierda Unida, which reported the events five years ago, expresses suspicions about the documentation relating to more than a hundred votes. A group of queries appears with an ‘X’ indicating the place of signature; another with date corrections; in another group the same writing coincides, etc.

And in this case, which the Civil Guard is investigating, the Post Office played a key role, since two of the employees of the public company are being prosecuted for their role in the plot which favored the socialists with a view to revalidate the absolute majority in the city.

As ABC has previously reported, seven members of the local United Left In Albaida, a few months after the 2019 elections, they met with two officials from Email to clarify what happened after suspicions of vote manipulation. The two directors of this company responded that if they could demonstrate that there had been a single fraudulent vote, the company would take part in the case. Although five years later, it has not yet appeared. The one who did it was the People’s Party.

For this reason, the prosecution brought by IU asked the judge to summon one of Correos’ legal representatives to testify as a witness, since until now only the person responsible for the case Albaida Officestating that he knew nothing of the alleged irregularities.

It must be remembered that the Law on the electoral system (Loreg) includes a specific section for the work of workers of the public company Correos, who must verify that the signature of the person who requested the postal vote and delivered it is the same as that affixed to the national identity document. This means that the two workers who allegedly allied themselves with the socialists to falsify the votes could have committed several crimes, not only for not having verified the signature of the aforementioned voters, but even for having filled out the ballot paper in the name of some neighbors and having dropped it off at the office, bypassing all the control mechanisms included in Loreg.

The Civil Guard informed the investigating court that of the 115 people hired in 2019 by Albaida City Hall, 20 of them voted by mail and were registered at the same address. In other words, they were entire families. In this sense, IU explained that people hired in the municipal employment programs Since January of the same year, they had exercised their right to vote by correspondence, like all workers under permanent contracts at the municipal council.

The roles of the people surveyed

According to the IU complaint, JARC, a PSOE activist (he registered on an electoral list) and municipal employee, was “the person responsible” for controlling the electoral lists, “to the point of knowing the numbering which corresponded to each voter”. Á.LC, PSOE advisor, “scrutinized” the census and provided information of those who might be “tempted by promises of employment” to be granted the power to vote by post for them. CRM, Post Office employee and former socialist councilor, “would have been responsible for receiving both the postal vote requests from people who accepted the criminal practices and the votes that others of those who reported (the Post Office employee), as a mail deliverer, took at the Town Hall and brought them to the post office.” The person indicted is AGD, who collected the postal voting files from the Town Hall and dropped them off at the post office, without the candidates having to take this step.

BDA, a municipal employee with a permanent contract and socialist member, was a relative of the organizing secretary of the local PSOE. He called, according to IU, by telephone from the Town Hall to request the vote to those who would be favored by employment contracts. Finally, GCM, an honorary senior official of the local PSOE, also “demanded” votes in exchange for jobs or literacy programs in the municipal council.

For IU, the mayor had to have a “significant participation in the events reported, because he could not ignore everything that was planned, programmed and carried out”. So, they realized that “more than a hundred people handed in their identity cards to process their absentee ballot applications and someone forged their signature on the documents.

In this case, the processing of which is particularly slow, several residents of Albaida have already testified. So, one couple admitted that they had never voted, but that their votes were in the ballot box. They had forged their signatures. Another neighbor admitted that They offered him a job at town hall if he signed for the PSOE. The judge, for example, asked another witness if the signature that appeared on the voting documents was indeed his, since it differed from that appearing on the DNI.