2022 Portuguese legislative elections

On October 27, 2021, the proposal of the XXII Constitutional Government of the State Budget for 2022 was rejected in the Assembly of the Republic. The proposal had the vote in favor of the Socialist Party (PS), the abstention of the People–Animals–Nature (PAN) and the two non-registered deputies, and the vote against of all other parties with parliamentary representation on the left, the Communist Party Portuguese (PCP), Ecologist Party "Os Verdes" (PEV), Left Bloc (BE), and on the right, Social Democratic Party (PSD), CDS – Popular Party (CDS–PP), Liberal Initiative (IL), and ENOUGH (CH).

Following the budget rejection, the first in the history of the Third Republic, the President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa publicly announced, on November 4, the appointment of elections for January 30, 2022. On December 5, 2022, 2021, officially enacted the decision. According to the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, elections must be held within sixty days following the dissolution of Parliament.

Voting during the pandemic

These elections, which will be the fourth electoral act — after the Azores elections of 2020, the presidential elections of 2021 and the municipal elections of the same year — to take place in Portugal since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, will take place during the fifth wave. of the pandemic in the country, which is characterized by having the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant as the predominant variant. Therefore, until January 19, 2022, the official information was that people in confinement or isolation due to COVID-19 and others prevented from going to the polling station on the main day of the election, such as users of nursing homes or prisoners , could ask between 20 and 23 January to collect the respective vote at the address where they are in confinement, which will take place on 25 and 26 January. However, this would prevent all voters who were isolated from the 24th from voting.

On January 19, 2022, the Minister of Internal Administration, Francisca Van Dunem, and the Director General of Health, Graça Freitas, announced that voters in prophylactic isolation due to COVID-19 will be able to leave their homes to vote on the 30th of January. January, following a legal opinion that the Government had requested from the Consultative Council of the Attorney General's Office. The decision will still have to go through the Council of Ministers, which will change the rules regarding mandatory confinement to allow isolated voters - regardless of whether they are infected or not - to vote, recommendably between 6 pm and 7 pm of the same day, without the need to submit a declaration of prophylactic isolation. In the other three elections that had taken place during the pandemic, this decision had not been taken.

In that opinion, the Consultative Council of the Attorney General's Office, after the Government asked it which legal value should prevail (the ban on leaving the house due to the risk of contagion, or the universal right to vote), replied that "it cannot deprivation of the right of suffrage be imposed on voters subject to confinement" and announced that it considers it urgent to review the electoral legislation, claiming that the current legal regime "has not harmonized in adequate terms" the right to vote of voters in mandatory confinement. However, the National Elections Commission had already issued the same legal opinion.
early voting

Voters were able to vote early, which happened a week before Election Day, January 23, 2022. Voters had to register to be able to vote early between January 16 and 20, 2022. Asked to vote early, 315,785 voters, a number below expectations, as the government expected a higher percentage of voters to request an early vote. On January 23, 285,848 voters (90.5% of voters who requested) voted early.

Source : Wikipedia