The bodies in charge of the electoral process are:
– Electoral service: it must oversee and regulate the electoral and registrar boards, as well as create and maintain the electoral register (electoral registry), the nomination for people that have this right suspended and the General Electoral Archive (where electoral documentation is kept).
– Electoral boards: provincial bodies that propose the members of the registrars and define their workplace. They do the same for the tallying groups.
– Registrars: country entities that register Chilean and foreign citizens that have the right to vote in the electoral registries.
– Tallying groups: they group the ballots cast in an election and count them.
– Electoral Tribunal (tricel): it performs the election’s general tally, rule on complaints and proclaim the winners.
Electoral registry
This act is necessary to enforce the right to vote. It is voluntary, personal, free, public and official.
The citizen who is interested can register at the registrar that corresponds to their domicile.
In order to do so they must meet the requirements set forth by the Constitution for being a citizen: being Chilean, being 18 years old and never having been convicted of a crime. The same goes for Chileans born abroad and people that have received their nationality due to services rendered and have lived in Chile for over a year. Foreigners that have resided in our country for over five years are also eligible for registry, as well as people under 18 that will turn 18 on the day of the lection at the latest.
A person’s identity and age are verified with a valid national I.D. card or a similar document (issued by the Civil Registry) in the case of foreigners.
The new citizen will receive an electoral card that contains the name of the district they registered in and the numbers for their registry and the table they will vote at.
Electoral registry can be done every working day up to 90 days before the date of the election.
The registered person that has changed their domicile to an area that corresponds to another electoral board only has to register again in their new board. At that moment, a petition must be made for canceling the previous registry.
Registration of the candidates
In each election process the candidates have to make their registry before the director of the Electoral Service or the regional directors of the service.
In the case of candidates that are part of a political party (be they members or just if they are backed by them), the people in charge of carrying out that errand are the president and secretary of each party or parties if the case involves a pact or alliance.
Independent candidates cannot be registered in any political party and must count with the support of a number of citizens equal to 0.5% or more of the people that voted in the previous election. This support must be made public before a notary public by the citizens, who swear under oath or make a promise that they are not registered in any political party.
Tables that receive the ballots
On the day of the elections, the five members of each table –appointed by the electoral boards- gather at the voting location at seven am. However, if there is less than three members, the electoral board delegate will appoint replacements for these missing members from the voters that use that specific table.
When all of the members of the table are accounted for, they must appoint a president, a secretary and a commissioner. At that moment, the latter must inform the board delegate of the names of the table members that are present and petition the electoral tools necessary to open up the table, which must function for nine hours, beginning from when it was opened up.
After completing this timeframe and if there are no more voters wishing to vote, the president of the table will close the ballot casting and tally up the ballots.
The act of voting
The citizen must present himself at the corresponding voting table and has to comply with the following steps:
1. Present their I.D. card (it is the only valid voting document) to the table president so the can verify the person’s registry in the electoral registry book.
2. Then, the voter must register themselves in the electoral registry ledger. The person then receives their ballot (or ballots), a pencil and a/the adhesive seal/s.
3. After that, they must enter the voting booth, where they have to make a vertical line over the horizontal line next to the name of the candidate/s of their preference.
4. Moving on, they have to fold ad seal the ballot (or ballots) with the adhesive stamp/s.
5. At that moment, they have to exit the voting booth and deliver the ballot (or ballots) to the table president, who will cut out the number (or numbers) from the ballot (or ballots) and return it to the voter.
6. Now, they must deposit the ballot/s in the urn/s and get their right thumb fingerprinted.
7. Finally, the voter has to reclaim their I.D. card.
