Two Braille Ballot Templates per Polling Station: the Azores Electoral Law Changes on Friday, and an Unbalanced Candidate List Now Falls Whole

Every polling station in the Azores will hold at least two braille templates for the ballot paper at the next regional election, under a law published in Thursday's Diário da República that takes effect on Friday. Lei Orgânica n.º 3/2026 is the tenth amendment to the electoral law for the Azorean Legislative Assembly, a text originally approved as Decreto-Lei n.º 267/80. Parliament passed it on 17 July and President António José Seguro promulgated it on 12 August.

The law does two distinct things. It writes a full procedure for voters with a visual impairment into the conduct of the poll, and it hardens the gender parity rule on candidate lists.

The Template, and Who Has to Handle It

Article 97.º now requires braille templates to be produced for the ballot papers, identical to them and carrying the cut-out spaces matching the squares for each competing list. Printing the ballots and producing the templates is a regional cost, carried by the member of the Regional Government responsible for electoral matters, who sends them to each mayor. Each polling station or section receives ballots equal to its registered electorate plus 10 percent, and no fewer than two braille templates, in a sealed and lacquered envelope. Where possible the number is set in proportion to an estimate of visually impaired voters supplied in advance by the juntas de freguesia, and where possible the templates are produced in coordination with associations supporting blind citizens, who validate their conformity.

Article 54.º gives the delivery deadline: ballots and templates reach each presiding officer no later than three days before polling day, and the officer signs a verification record on receipt confirming the materials arrived intact and in the right quantity.

Inside the booth, article 98.º says that when a voter asks for a template it is handed over placed on top of the ballot so the voter can read it and mark a cross in the cut-out square of their chosen list. The template must have been disinfected beforehand and kept in an individual reusable envelope. After voting the voter returns it to the table, and the table is responsible for cleaning and safekeeping it between uses until the poll closes.

Article 99.º, the article on voters with disabilities, adds that visually impaired electors may request a template so that they can carry out the acts described in article 98.º by themselves. Presiding officers must announce at the start of the poll that templates are available, and members of polling station tables must receive prior training on handling them and on accessible communication with blind and partially sighted voters. At the count, under article 102.º, templates are tallied whether used or not, cleaned and sealed in their own envelope.

Forty Percent, or the Whole List Falls

The second change is shorter and sharper. Article 15.º-A now defines parity as a minimum representation of 40 percent of each sex on a list, rounded where necessary to the nearest whole number, and its fourth paragraph is repealed. Article 159.º-A states the consequence: if a non-parity list is not corrected within the period set by article 28.º, the entire list is rejected.

The revocation clause also strikes paragraph a) of article 2.º, the provision on electoral incapacity. What survives in that article is paragraph b), which still withholds the vote from people with a notorious severe limitation or alteration of mental functions, even where they are not subject to a court accompaniment measure, when they are committed to a psychiatric establishment or declared as such by a board of two doctors, and paragraph c), which covers those deprived of political rights by a final judgment.

The law republishes the whole electoral law in an annex. The Azores marked fifty years of regional self-government this month.