From the 145,908 votes cast outside Spanish territory in the general elections of November 2019 to between 300,000 and 450,000 that, according to the estimates that can be made, are expected to be in the next elections, scheduled in principle for the end of next year. The abolition of the requested vote that Congress initially approves today will generate a new shock in the participation of the diaspora.
Although under the veil of uncertainty of a new system in a vote in which many factors operate, not always saints, it should not be ruled out that the hitherto historical record of 382,568 ballots from abroad in 2008 will be exceeded. of any control, there was a participation of 31.7% of the census. Now a smaller one is expected, between 15 and 20%, but with a million more voters than then, up to the current 2,266,187.
Since 2011, Spaniards abroad, of whom only 31% were born in Spain, had to request documentation to vote through a form that came to them by mail and that could later be downloaded online. Later, once the candidacies were published, the ballots were sent to them so that they could send their vote back. This procedure, which is not so rare in the world, had the particularity of being done with hardly any time, in only 54 days and by means of quite poor postal services in distant South America, with a total of four shipments or three, if the download. Not only did it generate holdings of even less than 5%, but there weren’t many applications either. This system was called the “requested vote”. It was the one that was used between 1985 and 2011 in the municipal ones, in which you can no longer participate from abroad.
Now the prayer disappears and it’s all ex officio again, automatic. The Electoral Census Office will make two shipments to the more than 2 million Spaniards registered in the consulates. The first will include the documentation to vote, except for the ballots, which are what delayed the process, because they depend on the deadlines for submitting the lists by the parties. For this reason, it will be possible to download them online, including at consulates, embassies and centers that are enabled to collect electoral documentation. And the Electoral Census Office will send them in a second shipment.
It will continue to be possible to send the vote by mail, without being able to verify the identity of the person making the delivery, although the law says that it must be the voter, or give it by hand to a Spanish official, with deadlines that have been stretched to the maximum and that in the general elections they will delay the scrutiny until Friday. And the main security clause is the obligation to include a copy of the passport, DNI or equivalent consular document.
In this way, in order to assess the impact of the reform, the only reference, although not entirely equivalent, is provided by the three elections of 2009, Galician, Basque and European, and the Catalan elections of 2010, the last ones before implementation. of the requested vote. At the proposal of the Galician PP of Núñez Feijóo, the Electoral Board forced in 2009 to include the passport or similar, which in the Galician case caused a drop in participation of 12 points and a decrease in conflict. The average participation of these four elections was 17%, which applied to the current census would give something less than 400,000 votes. If the lowest rate is taken, 13% of Catalans, it would be almost 300,000 and more than half a million with 23% of Galicians. In the PP of Galicia they consider that in the first general elections of the new system there will be a desire to participate and 20% will be reached, which would mean 450,000 ballots, multiplying by three the 145,908 of 2019.
In any case, not only is the effect of the possible enthusiasm that may exist among the part of the diaspora most linked to the country of origin, which is interested in participating, not only unknown, but it also remains to be seen how the parties act and if the PP and PSOE revives its old powerful machinery in the countries of the Río de la Plata. Resurrecting makes a lot of sense, since it is well documented that before the requested vote, people could vote on behalf of the dead. Now there will be five-year revisions of the census to avoid this, but there are potential options for other maneuvers, such as the collection over time of photocopies of documents, or the reissue of the famous banquets of the Diputación de Pontevedra of the popular Rafael Louzán with a photocopier in the menu. Also, although it is more complex, the figure of the collector may reappear, who charged a few pesos for each envelope he got from house to house.
Faced with the stony nature of the Spanish electoral system since 1977 in its fundamental elements, such as the smallest Congress since the 19th century, the province as a constituency, the penalization of suffrage in the most populated areas, the D’Hondt rule and the closed and blocked, the foreign vote has become the great field of experimentation, often the result of electoral engineering maneuvers, seeking the benefit of the dominant forces at any given time, without connection with the migratory reality. Thus, the restrictive requested vote was implemented in 2011 in the midst of a resurgence of emigration abroad, which generated great uneasiness among the new expatriates.
It all started with the referendum on the Political Reform Law of 1976. After the very active emigrant associations in the rest of Europe claimed their right to have a voice in the future democracy, basing themselves above all on their contributions of foreign currency, the The government of Adolfo Suárez eliminated the traditional requirement of the previous electoral regulations of residing within Spain in order to vote, against which groups of the American diaspora had protested without success since the beginning of the 20th century. The Government did it with a clear electoral calculation, because in that referendum of December 15, 1976, to gain its legitimacy, it needed to fill the ballot boxes and the emigrants from Europe were still on the population registers. In addition, he counted on his overwhelming favorable vote to establish in Spain a democratic system comparable to that of his countries of residence.
The great facilities of 1976, when the consulates could be used to withdraw the documentation, became powerful obstacles in the general elections of 1977, in which the Government feared, as everything indicates that it actually happened, that this vote would be mostly from the left. There was then a situation similar to that of recent years, since the right to vote was recognized, even written in the Constitution in the case of general elections, but the deadlines and procedures made it difficult to achieve.
Already with a socialist majority in Congress, the situation began to change with the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime, LOREG of 1985. It established that the count from abroad was no longer done at the tables on election night, along with that of the votes from within Spain, and it was carried out a few days later at the electoral boards, which gave more time to receive it. Thus, the number of votes began to grow, which before was negligible and it was not known how many there were, and the participation of expatriates was given increasing visibility.
The great leap came in 1995, when, already at the end of the felipismo, the PSOE accepted the demand of the organizations of the diaspora, which the PP of Manuel Fraga had endorsed, that abroad it would not be necessary to request registration in the census, but rather that it be ex officio, as in Spain. It is a model that, although lately it is beginning to spread, is a minority in the world. In addition, in Spain it was done by overturning the outdated consular records, which gave the right to vote to several thousand dead. The census practically multiplied by two and the scandals followed one another. The plot of Formenter of the Government of Jaume Matas and the maneuvers of the Galician women of 2005, those of the fall of Fraga, were very popular.
The outrages discredited the participation of expatriates, while the reforms of the nationality law triggered the census. There was a first cut, that of 2009 of that obligation to attach a document with the vote. And then came the exceptional situation of 2010, when the evicted socialist government of Rodríguez Zapatero, with the Galician José Blanco as electoral guru, feared what the PP could do to him in the future with the unbridled weapon of the foreign vote. But scalded by his last-minute defeat in 2004, the popular Mariano Rajoy was wary of what might happen in the 2011 elections abroad. So both parties agreed to implored vote reform to reduce diaspora participation to the point of making it almost irrelevant. This did not prevent foreign suffrage from deciding the government of Asturias in 2012 or changes in regional seats and one in Congress, because more important than the volume of ballots that arrive from abroad are the differences within Spain.
All these legal changes have a direct impact on the results. Thus, in the times of great lack of control, from 1995 to 2008, the force that had power won. With the requested vote, the data from abroad tended to be more similar to those from the interior, although with a great initial strength of Podemos and its confluences, which won in the general elections of 2015 and 2016, while the PSOE did so in those of 2019. Not only was there very little vote, but above all it came from Europe, more favorable to the left, as shown by the results of states such as Portugal and Italy, which break them down by country, something that Spain has not done so far. On the other hand, the foreseeable recovery of American suffrage may boost the PP, although Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE has in its favor having been, together with Podemos, the promoter of the abolition of the requested vote, which, with the final consensus of the PP of Núñez Feijóo, today will approve the Congress to send it to the Senate.
