It has been a long road that has brought us to this September 25, the date on which Cuba holds the popular referendum on the Family Code, to decide at the polls the future of a regulation charged with affection, plurality, respect and inclusion, a purpose that, according to estimates, will involve more than 331,900 voters in Ciego de Ávila who will be able to exercise their right to vote.

To that end, starting at seven in the morning, around 900 polling stations opened their doors this Sunday throughout the geography of Ciego de Ávila, a moment that has been preceded by preparation days, including two dynamic tests, in which they have adjusted details to ensure the necessary conditions for the vote, as well as the communication, food and transportation plans, key to the proper development of the process, and which have had the support of organizations, mass organizations and the community.

Likewise, as the Provincial Electoral Council (CEP) has explained, work has been done on the completion of the more than 4,500 electoral authorities that work at different levels during this day, which, since they took office, have received training with practical moments included, which makes it possible to develop a democratic exercise attached to legality, transparency and ethics.

According to the CEP, the places enabled for voting are located, fundamentally, in state entities such as schools, work centers, medical offices, to which are added the 69 that work in the homes of families with extensive experience in the participation of processes. electoral.

On this occasion, those who are distant from their area of ​​residence for personal, work or educational reasons, will be able to vote in the 29 special schools arranged in the province that, in addition to the two provincial hospitals in the main city and Morón, the terminals of National buses and Railways, from the provincial capital, and a boat from the Marina Azulmar, cover for the first time 17 tourist facilities of the Jardines del Rey destination to facilitate the vote of the more than 3,000 clients staying there and those who work today.

As it is tradition, it is our pioneers who guard the ballot boxes, on a day that will be nuanced by the youth of the 3,500 Ciego de Ávila citizens, arriving at electoral age, who, for the first time, will exercise their right to vote, an action for which they have been previously trained in their schools, as well as that of the students of the Secondary, Professional Technical and Higher education, who will accompany the process as collaborators.

The polling stations will remain open until six in the afternoon, at which time the vote count will take place, an act that, as Marleny Báez Valdivia, vice president of the CEP, pointed out, is public, and as such it may be witnessed by the people who wish it, but "the ballots can only be manipulated by the electoral authorities."

After its approval last July by the National Assembly of People's Power, the Family Code is submitted to a popular referendum this September 25 by constitutional mandate, and will enter into force once it is ratified, for which it must receive more than 50 percent. percent of the valid affirmative votes.