After a day without incident during which the 50 councilors responsible for preparing the new Chilean constitution were elected, polling stations in that country began to close at 6:00 p.m. local time.
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Via its social networks, the Election Service (Servel) stated that “the tables cannot be closed when people are queuing inside or outside the premises”.
For election day, 38,665 polling stations were set up across Germany, spread over 2,932 locations. The electoral roll included 15 million eligible voters.
Previously, the Servel announced that the first results would be available a few hours after the tables closed. In addition, he specified that his experts will provide the preliminary Election Day results, while the Telling Colleges will provide the preliminary results and the Election Qualifying Tribunal will provide the final results.
The polling stations begin to close. It is important to remember that Servel will deliver the preliminary results, Telling Colleges will deliver the preliminary results and the Elections Qualifying Tribunal will deliver the final results.#Elections2023
– Election Service (@ServelChile)
May 7, 2023
The 50 new constitutional advisers, elected by popular vote, are expected to start work on June 7 and will have five months to debate a draft constitution already prepared by a committee of experts.
Later, in December 2023, Chileans will return to the polls to vote for or against the text that emerges from this work.
A Servel representative, Pablo Contreras, assured that these were the second constituent elections in two years. They were calm and showed the high bourgeois culture of their countrymen.
President Gabriel Boric went to the polls at Armando Quezada Acharan Industrial High School in Punta Arenas. The President repeated his words: “I have faith in the wisdom of the Chilean people, my expectation is that we deepen democracy.”
News from these elections
In Chile, voting is compulsory and in the case of employment, employers must allow at least two hours for people to vote. In order to move around without setbacks and to exercise their right to vote, citizens had free subway and S-Bahn connections this Sunday.
The popular election of 50 constitutional advisers in March will see the establishment of a congressional commission of 24 experts who have prepared a preliminary draft that the editorial board will work on starting in June.
The editorial board will work for five months and the project will be subject to a referendum for ratification on December 17 with mandatory participation.
This Sunday the candidates were organized in blocs: the ruling parties and other left or center forces stood on two separate lists, while the traditional opposition right stood on only one.
There were also candidates from the far-right Republican Party and the populist People’s Party who could do well, analysts say.
The great novelty of this second attempt at the renewal of the Constitution is the involvement of a group of 24 experts appointed by Parliament, whose task is to prepare a draft to serve as the basis for the 50 Council members (25 men and 25 women) elected to the polls .
These elections have been marked by a lack of popular interest, in contrast to the previous bubbling process, which ended on September 4 when 62 percent of Chileans rejected the first proposed constitutional text in a referendum.