Vox is going to ask the Central Electoral Board to suspend voting by mail for all Spaniards residing abroad, as announced by the general secretary of the parliamentary group in Congress, José María Figaredo. Currently, there are 2.7 million people registered in the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA). Figaredo argues that Spaniards residing abroad are not required to identify themselves to send their vote by mail. Vox will also ask to audit and suspend registrations in CERA, arguing that the more than two million applications of the grandchildren lawwhich allows under Franco, can double the electoral roll abroad.
The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has insisted on his war against the norm and has demanded that it be paralyzed, because he believes that the President of the Government intends with it to “manufacture two and a half million voters”, assuming that the votes of the new voters would go to the PSOE. “It is a substantial modification of the census. It cannot continue,” he has indicated that this process involves the protection of the Democratic Memory Law. “There are two and a half million passports for people who, most of them, have never come to Spain,” Feijóo said on the Murcia channel TV7.
The PP spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García, also referred this Tuesday to the grandchildren law and to the suspicions of electoral fraud that it is sowing. “We are talking about a President of the Government who is in constitutional rebellion after three years without General State Budgets, cornered in a mountain of corruption, who is in parliamentary contempt, a desperate president, who is not reliable, who lies to us every day,” García asserted.
The president of the Xunta de Galicia, the popular Alfonso Rueda, also expressed this Tuesday “concerned” about the consequences of the so-called grandchildren law, although without going into insinuations about hypothetical electoral fraud. “We are doing what no European country is doing, at least with this intensity, with this speed and without any type of information. All this has to respond to some interest, I don’t know which one,” said Rueda in the Congress of Deputies, where he took part in a committee to take stock of his actions as president of the Spanish delegation before the Committee of the Regions of the EU, reports José Hermida
Rueda has not denied, when asked by journalists, that the granting of nationality to the grandchildren of emigrants has been a historical demand of the PP of Galicia, the community with the largest diaspora spread throughout America. But it has added the requirement that “a link with our country” must be demonstrated, without going into details of what requirements should be required to demonstrate such a connection.
From the Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, criticized this Monday the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for, through the grandchildren law. “Does he already know what they are going to vote for? He is putting the bandage before the wound,” he said, after describing Feijóo’s accusations as “Trumpism.” Torres has described the intervention of the opposition leader as “Trumpist”, has said that he suffers from “paranoid madness since he failed to be president” of the Government and has regretted that he copied Vox’s speech on the matter to the millimeter.
In his opinion, suggesting that the granting of nationality to the descendants of exiles is “electoral engineering.” “It is taking the Spanish for fools,” he added. Torres has defended the right of the grandchildren of exiles who had to flee Spain due to Franco’s repression to recover their nationality and has said that the majority of the 2.4 million applications submitted will be approved “because they meet the requirements.”
Absentee ballot
The postal voting system provides that the consulates send the voters the certificate of registration in the census, which they return in a pre-stamped and sealed envelope, which is sent to Spain through a diplomatic bag.
Vox does not want to return to the previous system of requested voting, but rather eliminate voting by mail abroad, alleging risk of manipulation, although maintaining in-person voting at the consulate. In practice, this would deprive a good part of Spaniards residing outside of Spain from exercising their right, by having to travel hundreds of kilometers to reach the nearest consulate.
In addition, Vox will ask the Central Electoral Board to audit and suspend registrations in the CERA, arguing that the more than two million applications submitted under the so-called grandchildren law —actually, a provision of the Democratic Memory law— can duplicate the electoral roll abroad and alter the result of the next elections. Figaredo has not questioned the professionalism of the consuls, who have the last word on the matter, but he has questioned the companies subcontracted to manage the enormous documentation presented. In practice, the measure requested by Vox would mean partially suspending the Democratic Memory Law, which the ultra party appealed to the Constitutional Court in January 2023, without it having ruled.
