Portuguese vote today to elect next President
The polling stations, which this year are more to avoid large crowds of people, open at 8 am and close at 7 pm. In total, 10,865,010 voters were registered on the electoral roll at the reference date of December 31.
According to the rules defined by the Directorate-General for Health for the elections, to go to vote, voters will have to wear a mask and, preferably, take a pen, for sanitary and hygiene reasons. Some city councils have decided to test all the elements that will be on the polling stations.
This year, the elections are taking place with the country living under general confinement due to the covid-19 pandemic and, therefore, abstention is, more than ever, the most feared invisible adversary.
On the other hand, some candidates and political parties have warned of the difficulties of emigrants in countries with widespread confinements and voters sick with covid-19 or suspected cases who are in prophylactic isolation.
However, all citizens who were diagnosed with infection with the new coronavirus or who went into prophylactic isolation as of January 18 were no longer able to request early voting. Until Saturday, the confirmed cases alone were almost 75 thousand.
This year, there are more polling stations – in total there are 12,287 sections – and some locations have been moved to larger spaces in order to ensure security due to the covid-19 pandemic.
Seven candidates are running for election, Marisa Matias (Bloco de Esquerda), Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (PSD) Tiago Mayan Gonçalves (Liberal Initiative), André Ventura (Chega), Vitorino Silva, João Ferreira (PCP) and PS activist Ana Gomes (PS), who appear in this order in the bulletin.
The ballot paper, however, has one more name: that of Eduardo Baptista, then the first, whose candidacy was not accepted by the Constitutional Court due to lack of signatures and, therefore, votes in this option will be considered null.
