Junta Electoral Central
According to the Spanish electoral law ( Ley Orgánica del régimen electoral general , LOREG), the Junta Electoral Central ( central electoral committee , abbreviated: JEC ) is the supreme body of the electoral administration ( administración electoral ), which also includes the electoral committees at the level of the autonomous communities , the provinces and the judicial districts as well as the electoral boards belong.
Composition and term of office
The JEC consists of eight judicial and five non-judicial members. The judicial members are determined by lot from among the judges of the Supreme Court ( Tribunal Supremo ). The non-judicial members must be university professors in law or political science . They are appointed on the joint proposal of the parties represented in the House of Representatives ( Congreso de los Diputados ). If such a joint proposal by all parties does not come about, the Presidium of the House of Representatives determines the non-judicial members, taking into account the strengths of this Chamber of Deputies.
The JEC is the only permanent electoral body alongside the electoral committees of most of the Autonomous Communities. H. the other election committees are only ever formed for one specific election. The members of the JEC are appointed at the beginning of a legislative period within 90 days of the constituent session of the House of Representatives. They remain in office until the newly formed JEC meets for its constituent meeting.
In its constituent meeting, the JEC elects a chairman and a deputy chairman from among its judicial members.
Like every collegiate body in Spain, the JEC also has a secretary. The Secretary General of the House of Representatives (i.e. the head of the parliamentary administration, comparable to the director of the German Bundestag ) acts as the secretary of the JEC . The secretary has the right to speak but not to vote.
The President of the National Institute of Statistics ( Instituto Nacional de Estadística ) also takes part in the meetings of the JEC in his capacity as director of the Oficina del Censo Electoral (which keeps the electoral register). He also only has the right to speak but not to vote.
Task and competencies
According to Art. 8 LOREG, the task of the electoral administration and thus the JEC is to ensure the transparency and objectivity of the electoral process and the principle of equality.
The LOREG assigns the JEC a number of competencies, including: a .: The JEC is responsible for the management and supervision of the activities of the Oficina del Censo Electoral . The JEC can issue binding administrative regulations ( instrucciones ) for the subordinate electoral committees and modest inquiries made to them by the provincial electoral committees with binding effect. Decisions of the provincial electoral committees which contradict the JEC's interpretation of the electoral law can be revoked upon application, but also ex officio. In addition, the JEC and the provincial electoral committees have disciplinary power vis-à-vis the officials involved in the electoral process and are responsible for prosecuting administrative offenses in the electoral process. Furthermore, the JEC decides on the proposal of a commission formed from representatives of the parties on the allocation of time for election advertising spots in the public media. An action to challenge the election before the administrative court usually has to be preceded by preliminary proceedings before the JEC (Art. 108 LOREG). In the case of the European elections , the JEC is responsible for approving the nominations and determining the election result and the elected. Art. 20 LOREG also provides that those involved in the electoral process can contact the JEC directly with inquiries ( consultas ) on questions of general electoral law . The requests are decided by the JEC by resolution.
Importance of the JEC
The JEC is of central importance in Spanish electoral law. In the Spanish electoral literature, decisions of the JEC are cited to a much greater extent than those of the courts.
This importance arises in particular from those competencies of the JEC that are designed to ensure a uniform interpretation of the electoral law by the electoral bodies (possibility of instrucciones , authority to revoke decisions of lower election committees, decision in the preliminary proceedings to contest elections, etc.). In addition, there is the instrument of consultas , which enables those involved in the electoral process to inquire in advance about the opinion of the highest electoral body on questions of doubt, before the problem even becomes acute. A significant number of the decisions of the JEC involve answering such inquiries.
While under German electoral law the electoral committees are only responsible for approving nominations before the election and for determining the election results after the election, the powers of the Spanish election committees go far beyond this and exist in almost all matters related to the electoral process.
The provincial electoral committees for election campaign events are also the competent authority within the meaning of the right of assembly . Related to this is a decision of the JEC from 2011, which was also reported in the international media: When, shortly before the regional and local elections in 2011, there were mass protests in many Spanish cities with occupations of public spaces that lasted for days ( Movimiento 15 -M ), there were divergent decisions of various provincial electoral committees as to whether these are election campaign events which fall within their competence and which are prohibited by election law on election day and the day before the election. At the request of a provincial electoral committee and the government, the JEC decided on May 19, 2011 (three days before the election) that these meetings on May 21 and 22 were inadmissible.
The JEC also made a politically significant decision in the run-up to the Spanish parliamentary elections in 2019 : Since the Catalonia crisis following the controversial independence referendum in 2017 , many buildings of the Catalan regional government and administration had the Estelada (flag of the Catalan separatism movement) and yellow ribbons (symbol of the protest against the imprisonment of Catalan separatist politicians ). In response to a complaint by the Ciudadanos party , the JEC decided on March 11, 2019 that the use of these symbols on public buildings violated the obligation of neutrality, which must be strictly observed by public institutions in the pre-election period, and should be removed within 48 hours.
For repeated violations of this order, the Catalan Prime Minister, Quim Torra , was sentenced on 19 December 2019 for disobedience ( desobediencia ) by a criminal court to a fine and the loss of office and eligibility for a period of one year and six months. Thereupon the JEC decided based on a regulation in the electoral law on January 3, 2020 that Torra had lost his mandate in the regional parliament with this conviction (although it is not yet final). This JEC decision came out with seven to six votes. The six unsuccessful members of the JEC did not consider their responsibility to be given and gave a corresponding special vote .
In the same context, on April 29, 2019 the ex-Prime Minister of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont , who had fled the judiciary , and the two other fugitive ex-ministers, Clara Ponsati and Toni Comin, decided that they could be due to their stay outside Spain (and lack of registration as a Spaniard abroad) will not run for the European elections in May 2019. This decision was overturned on May 6, 2019 by the Madrid Administrative Court.
Seat
The JEC has its seat in Madrid in a building of the House of Representatives, since according to Art. 13 LOREG the Cortes Generales have to provide the JEC with the material and human resources necessary to carry out its tasks.
Website
The decisions of the JEC are published on its website. It also contains legal texts and other information on voting rights.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Junta Electoral Central: Acuerdo de la Junta Electoral Central 349/2011. In: Junta Electoral Central website. May 19, 2011, Retrieved March 20, 2019 (Spanish).
- ↑ Junta Electoral Central: Acuerdo de la Junta Electoral Central 55/2019. In: Junta Electoral Central website. March 11, 2019, accessed March 20, 2019 (Spanish).
- ^ Junta Electoral Central: Acuerdo de la Junta Electoral Central 2/2020. In: Junta Electoral Central website. January 3, 2019, accessed January 17, 2019 (Spanish).
- ↑ Junta Electoral Central: Acuerdo de la Junta Electoral Central 287/2019. In: Junta Electoral Central website. April 28, 2019, Retrieved May 6, 2019 (Spanish).
- ↑ JJ Gálvez: Puigdemont podrá presentarse a las elecciones europeas. In: El País. May 6, 2019, Retrieved May 6, 2019 (Spanish).