The president of the board of directors of the Electoral Service (Servel), Andres Tagle, referred to the mandatory vote for the exit plebiscite of the proposed new Constitution, which will take place on September 4. In this regard, he said that from the agency they will have to denounce those who do not participate in the election.
“We have the obligation to denounce all the people who do not vote. What we are going to do and it will not be very immediate, because we have to review the electoral rolls,” Tagle said in conversation with The Mercury.
“We have a term of one year to denounce, but we will do it, I think, three or four months later, because we have to review all the polling stations by hand and see which people voted and did not vote according to the signatures,” added the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Servel.
“Those who did not vote will all be reported to the local police court. The law does not contemplate an administrative excuse before the Electoral Service. There are only excuses before the local police judge, who must summon the people and there they can be excused ” he explained.
Along these lines, he said that “there are excuses that the law allows: being abroad, due to health problems, being more than 200 kilometers away or due to another serious impediment.”
Regarding the constancy before the Carabineros (in the face of some problems, such as the distance from the polling place), Tagle maintained that it can be done, but it does not exempt the person from not having voted.
“Unfortunately in the Constitution (article 142) it remained that there is no administrative excuse. And the court decides on the amount of the fine and what the judge decides,” he explained.
Regarding the fines for not voting, the amount of these starts at half UTM and reaches up to three UTM.
