&NewLine;<p>If you live in Portugal and are at least minimally interested in the country's economic and political life&comma; you know that on Sunday, January 30, legislative elections will take place following the dissolution of the Portuguese government initiated by the President of the Portuguese Republic on <a href="https://vivreauportugalconsulting.com/president-de-la-republique-portugaise/" data-type="post" data-id="8474">November 5, 2021</a>&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>According to the newspaper Diário de Notícias&comma; the emigrants' "negligence" and attachment to their homeland may be to blame&period;&nbsp&semi;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="election-du-30-janvier-le-portugal-va-t-il-faire-voter-les-fantomes">January 30 election&comma; is Portugal going to make ghosts vote &quest;&nbsp&semi;</h2>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>Still according to <a href="https://www.dn.pt/politica/eleitores-fantasma-a-culpa-e-do-desleixo-e-do-apego-a-terra-dos-emigrantes--14530202.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Diário de Notícias</a>For years&comma; the "dead" were to blame&period; Now&comma; they say&comma; it seems to be the emigrants' fault&period; The phenomenon of ghost voters&comma; who number more than&rsquo&semi;a million this year&comma; distorts abstention and can even "distort" the number of MPs per constituency&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>They "falsify the turnout"&comma; generate "erroneous conclusions" and can "alter the number of MPs" per constituency&period; This is an old problem that has been around for a long time and saw "particularly high values in the mid-1990s" writes DN in its January 27, 2022&period article;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>At that time&comma; "the number of people registered to vote exceeded the voting age population by&rsquo&semi;around 20 &percnt;&period; Since then&comma; the percentage has fallen&comma; but it almost always remains around 10&percnt;&period; It&rsquo&semi;s as if we could remove "this inconsistency" &&num;8211&semi; "overestimation" &&num;8211&semi; of abstention figures&comma; and look at a situation closer to reality &colon; the 51&comma;4&percnt; of 2019&comma; for example&comma; would only be 41&comma;4&percnt;&comma; the 44&comma;1&percnt; of 2015 would be 34&comma;1&percnt;&comma; and the 41&comma;9&percnt; of 2011 would represent an abstention of 31&comma;9&percnt;&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://vivreauportugalconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/election-987x1024.jpg" alt="election, portugal&newline;" class="wp-image-8561"/><figcaption>Source&colon; Diário de Notícias</figcaption></figure>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>If we go back to the days when electoral rolls rarely eliminated the dead&comma; it is possible&comma; given the considerable numbers detected in recent decades&comma; to look at the&rsquo&semi;abstention&comma; for example&comma; from 1991 &lpar;which was 32&comma;6&percnt;&rpar; and assimilate it to something close to or less than 22&percnt;&period; Or even envisage&comma; without much margin of&rsquo&semi;error&comma; that the 39&percnt; of&rsquo&semi;abstention in 1999 was only 29&percnt;&comma; or even less&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>The closest picture to the weight of ghost voters&comma; calculated for 2022 &lpar;1,143,604&rpar;&comma; can be found by looking at the 2019 election results &colon; these are almost as many&rsquo&semi;voters as those who enabled BE&comma; PCP-PEV&comma; CDS-PP and PAN to&rsquo&semi;elect&comma; together&comma; 40 MPs&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>João Tiago Machado&comma; spokesman for the CNE&comma; assures us that "what justifies this million 'ghost voters' &lpar;an expression that&rsquo&semi;he doesn&rsquo&semi;t like&rpar;" is the fact that&rsquo&semi;there are only&nbsp&semi;<strong>1&comma;5 million registered voters abroad</strong> "when in fact&comma; he says&comma; "our diaspora population is well over a million and a half"&period; And what&rsquo&semi;does this mean &quest; It means that&rsquo&semi;a large part of our emigrant community continues to&rsquo&semi;use their Portuguese address for&rsquo&semi;registration purposes"&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>It&rsquo&semi;s an attachment to the land of birth&comma; and perhaps a certain insouciance&comma; a certain distancing from the census&comma; he adds&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>In practice&comma; he explains&period; What happens is that someone who lives in Braga&comma; for example&comma; but actually lives in Paris&comma; when you knock on the door for the census or send a letter, it ends up not appearing in the census records because nobody actually lived in that house&nbsp&semi;"&period;a letter is sent, it ends up not appearing in the census records because nobody actually lived in that house, since the person actually lives abroad&nbsp&semi;"&period;&nbsp&semi;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>This absence has an immediate impact on the final figures&colon; "Abstention has erroneous values&period; We have a margin of 10 &percnt; which doesn&rsquo&semi;t exist&comma; which ends up not being real because people don't live where he says they live&period; "João Tiago Machado believes that this margin should be "removed from the accounts"&comma; for a better reading&comma; "in order to&rsquo&semi;have an exact notion of reality&comma; a more faithful portrait&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>For Marina Costa Lobo&comma; PhD in Political Science from the University of Oxford and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences-UL&comma; what is at stake&comma; is "the quality of our democracy and the erroneous and distorted perception of the civic sense of the Portuguese"&period;is "the quality of our democracy and the erroneous and distorted perception of the civic sense of the Portuguese"&period; Another warning&comma; this discrepancy could have "consequences on the distribution of seats by constituency and prevent a serious discussion on the reform of the electoral system&period;</p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>The consequence is unprecedented, as the researchers point out: distorted abstention and the real problem of representativeness in the constituencies&period; And in the end, the abstention rate is gigantic and is likely to have consequences for Sunday's elections&period;</p>&NewLine;
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