Spanish city holds referendum on renaming streets through Telegram bot

^{Spanish girl votes on the terminal, although she could communicate with the bot}

Telegram messenger is quickly gaining popularity not only in 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 renaming the eight city streets, which have kept their names since the times of the totalitarian regime of Franco.

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

The bots in Telegram appeared a little less than a year ago, and now there are a lot of them there, including for tracking comments on Github ( @GitHubBot ), drawing charts using formulas ( @Wolframbot ), converting documents from .doc, .docx, .odt, .txt and .jpg to PDF format ( @Topdf_bot ), text translation ( @YTranslateBot ), torrent downloads ( @Ru_tracker_bot ) and others.
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For admission to voting in the Quart de Poblet, you must inform the bot of the DNI ID card number (8 digits, the same as on the driver's license) or the tax number of the individual NIF and date of birth.



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

To rename exhibited eight streets:

• _{Antonio Iturmendi}
• _{Antonio Molle}
• _{Conde de rodezno}
• _{Ernesto García Raga}
• _{Esteban Bilbao}
• _{General lobo montero}
• _{Obispo Pildaín}
• _{Sargento Provisional}

“New names for streets are proposed to be selected from a list of 24 options — mostly female names belonging to famous actresses, activists, poetess and scholars, including mother Teresa and Maria Sklodowska-Curie,” Nikita Likhachev of TJournal figured out. - The municipality noted that currently there are only six objects in the city, named after women. After the vote, the eight most popular options will remain, and the city council will decide which streets to give these names. ”

Among the options offered, there is even "Ady Lovelace Street" - the world's first female programmer .



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