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Legal response to ballot box tender

Spanish prosecutor lodges criminal complaint as Catalan government opens tender for box suppliers

The Catalan government has taken a first step towards the formal purchasing of ballot boxes for the referendum on independence by yesterday opening a public tender to select ballot box suppliers, a move prior to assigning their manufacture. The reaction of the State institutions was not long in coming. Spanish prosecutors immediately announced they had submitted a complaint against the Catalan government, as Spanish government spokesperson Íñigo Méndez de Vigo had warned would happen last Friday. However, Carles Puigdemont's cabinet is convinced the tender is legal. It argues that the government has the powers to buy ballot boxes for their use in participatory and electoral processes, in the same manner as other regional governments have done.

“It is a permanent purchase for both now and for the future,” argued Catalan government spokesperson Neus Munté. She also accepted the public tender was related to the referendum and guaranteed that the executive would defend the “freedom” of companies wishing to apply for public contracts in the event of investigations and threats by the Spanish State.

The Catalan executive estimates that 8,000 ballot boxes will be needed to cover all polling stations, the same number as in elections to Parliament, and that number comprises the maximum production allotted in the specifications of the tender.

Unlike tenders for paper ballots and envelopes, which the executive offered in March, the framework agreement for the ballot box tender covers not only elections to the Parliament of Catalonia, but also refers to “popular consultations and other forms of citizen participation,” keeping it within the legal framework of both the Electoral Act and the Statute.

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