Spanish city holds referendum on renaming streets through Telegram bot

^{The Spanish girl votes at the terminal, although she could chat with the bot. The}

Telegram messenger is quickly gaining popularity not only at Geektimes , but also in individual countries. For example, yesterday Pavel Durov shared information that the municipality of Quart de Poblet in the province of Valencia (Spain) announced a referendum on the renaming of eight city streets that have retained their names since the totalitarian regime of Franco.

Why was Pavel Durov interested in renaming streets? Because the Spaniards vote in a referendum not only through offline terminals, but also through the Telegram bot @QuartVotaBOT , created by the municipality.

Telegram bots appeared a little less than a year ago, and now they are therea huge amount , including for tracking comments on Github ( @GitHubBot ), drawing graphs using formulas ( @Wolframbot ), converting documents from .doc, .docx, .odt, .txt and .jpg to PDF ( @Topdf_bot ), text translation ( @YTranslateBot ), torrent downloads ( @Ru_tracker_bot ) and others.

To be eligible to vote in Quart de Poblet, you need to inform the bot with the DNI ID card number (8 digits, the same as on the driver’s license) or the NIF individual’s tax number and date of birth.



After that, the bot checks that the person is present on the electoral lists of the district - and allows him to vote. Of course, such an identification cannot be called ideal, but it is not much better than identification by Russian banks by their mother’s maiden name (during a phone call). And the issue here is not so important.

There are eight streets to be renamed:

• _{Antonio Iturmendi}
• _{Antonio Molle}
• _{Conde de rodezno}
• _{Ernesto García Raga}
• _{Esteban bilbao}
• _{General lobo montero}
• _{Obispo pildaín}
• _{Sargento provisional}

“It is proposed to choose new street names from a list of 24 options - mainly female names belonging to famous actresses, activists, poetesses and scientists, including mother Teresa and Maria Sklodowska-Curie,” Nikita Likhachev from TJournal figured out. - The municipality noted that at the moment in the city there are only six objects named after women. After the vote, there will remain eight of the most popular options, and the city council will decide which streets to give these names. ”

Among the proposed options there is even “Ada Lovelace Street” - the first woman programmer in the world .



Voting through the Telegram bot turned out to be the most convenient for many citizens. As he writeslocal press, on the first day 272 people voted, including 79 through Telegram and 193 through the official website of the municipality. Offline kiosks did not work that day due to technical problems.