Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/98

 Rh When a deputy shall become disqualified after admission to the congress from any of the causes enumerated in Art. 5, his incapacity shall be declared and he shall immediately forfeit his office.

Those who already hold the office of deputy to the cortes shall not be admitted to the same congress by virtue of a partial election unless they have resigned the same before notice has been given to the district of such partial election.

The office of deputy to the cortes is gratuitous and voluntary, and may be resigned before and after taking the oath of office; but no resignation shall be admissible without the previous approval by the congress of the deputy's certificate of election.

In districts in which a deputy is to be elected no elector shall have the right to vote for more than one person; when more than one and as many as four are to be elected he shall have the right to vote for one less than the number to be elected; for two less if more than four are to be elected, and for three less if more than eight are to be elected.

The following candidates shall have the right to appoint supervisors for the electoral bureaus of the precincts comprising the district or section:

1. Ex-deputies to the Cortes, who have represented the same district or any other on the island.

2. Those who have been candidates in the same district in former elections and obtained at least one-fifth of all the votes cast.

3. Ex-senators elected by the island to which the district or section belongs.

4, Candidates for the office of deputy to the Cortes, proposed by means of tickets signed by electors of the respective district or section, or by notarial instruments, in the preparation of which a competent officer has taken part, the number of such electors being equal to at least one-twentieth of the entire number of those included in the final list of the district or section.

Only in pursuance of a resolution of Congress shall it be possible to proceed to a partial election for deputy in one or more districts, or because the post of representative of such district or districts has become vacant.

For the districts which, according to this law, are to elect three or more deputies, it shall be understood that there is a vacancy in their representation in the Cortes only when, for any reason, at least two deputies fail to act as such.

The royal decree convoking the electoral colleges of one or more districts for the partial election of deputies to the Cortes shall be published in the Gaceta de Madrid within eight days, reckoned from the date of the communication of the resolution of Congress. In the said royal decree the day shall be fixed on which the election shall take place, and that day shall not be fixed before twenty or after thirty days, reckoned from the date of the convocation. The royal decree shall be simultaneously published in the gazettes of Havana and Puerto Rico, according to circumstances, the proper order being communicated for that purpose by telegraph to the respective governors-general of the two Antilles.

The partial election shall take place on the day appointed, according to the procedure and in the form prescribed by this law for general elections.

Congress, exercising the prerogative belonging to it according to article 34 of the constitution, shall examine and judge of the legality of the elections according to the procedure provided by its regulations, and shall admit as deputies those who are found to have been legally elected and proclaimed in the districts, if they possess the capacity necessary to enable them to discharge the duties of the office, and are not disqualified in any of the ways defined by law.

In the case of an election in which the votes for each candidate are equal in number, if only one of the candidates who have received the same number of votes shall possess legal fitness to be deputy he shall at once be proclaimed and admitted, provided that the election is approved.

He who is shown to be legally elected shall likewise be at once admitted and proclaimed by Congress if there shall be, in the certificate of election, protests which seem justified against the votes cast for the other one or more candidates having an equal number of votes.

If there are no such differences, that one of the candidates having an equal number of votes shall be proclaimed deputy who—

(1) Has most frequently filled the office;

(2) Who has filled it for the longest time;

(3) Who is the oldest in years.

The certificates of the ballot board having been sent to the central board, agreeably to the provisions of article 69, shall be delivered by the latter, as they come into his possession, at the office of the secretary of Congress, at whose disposal that board shall, in all cases, hold the other documents relating to certificates of election.

The deputies elect or presumptive, who have proclaimed by the examin-