matthewbennett on Nostr: Vote buying cases rock the end of the local and regional election campaign in Spain ...
Vote buying cases rock the end of the local and regional election campaign in Spain
The going rate for a local vote in Spain, in such a highly fragmented and untransparent market, appears to be in the €50-200 range.
Spaniards vote today in local and regional elections. Water and the drought situation for farmers, housing and sqautters, the former terrorist murderers in Basque separatist election lists and the Vinicius racism in football scandal have all been major national points of contention over the past two or three weeks. The campaign has ended on an ugly democratic note, though, with an explosion of reports of vote buying taking place at the local level.
A non-exhaustive list of the places where some form of electoral fraud has been reported during the final days of this election campaign includes: Melilla (North Africa), Mojácar (Andalusia), Albudeite (Murcia), La Gomera (Canary Islands), Moraleja de Sayago (Castilla y León), Bigastro (Valencia), Las Hurdes (Extremadura), Pozuelo de Calatrava (Castilla la Mancha), Carboneras (Andalusia), Castro Caldelas (Galicia), Paterna del Campo (Andalusia), Mazarrón (Murcia), Vallalba del Alcor (Andalusia), Jaén (Andalusia), Arona (Canary Islands), Valverde del Camino (Huelva).
Some of them are still just accusations between parties but many have already reached the courts, with arrests by the Civil Guard. The price per vote, even with such an untransparent, highly fragmented market, seems to be in the €50-200 range. The methods involved are postal voting and online voting and many include the pressuring of immigrants, the poor or the elderly, for whom €150 means a lot but which is really cheap for a candidate looking to gain access to tens of millions of euros in juicy municipal contracts over the next four years.
If any convictions come out of all the investigations and arrests, the guilty parties could face up to three years in jail. Most of the headlines and media attention have gone to the vote buying involving Socialist Party (PSOE) candidates but looking at the lists of cases, there are several electoral fraud complaints involving Popular Party (PP) candidates too.
Vote buyers in Albudeite (Murcia) showed innovation, offering joints alongside the money. News also broke about a socialist mayor in Maracena (Andalusia) and a senior regional socialist leader being investigated for the kidnap of another socialist councillor, after the judge lifted the secrecy on that investigation; and in Valencia, a socialist candidate resigned after he was arrested and found to be a member of the Latin Kings gang.
Even though the list looks long and generates scandalous headlines and talking points in the last days of the campaign, it’s still only a couple of dozen towns out of over 8,000 that are voting today, and the Spanish voting process itself is normally pretty spotless. Are the two dozen towns just typical dirty local politics, far-removed from national campaigns and ideological aspirations but now more visible thanks to the speed of technolgy and reporting, or are they representative of a broader problem in local politics in Spain, the tip of an iceberg that limited policing resources have only managed to investigate in those few places? What would we discover if we had access to all the Whatsapp messages from all the local candidates across the country? Is there more of this going on than meets the eye and could systemic improvements be made to the voting process to stop it happening again in the future, or is it not worth the effort because it only happens in a few random towns?
The going rate for a local vote in Spain, in such a highly fragmented and untransparent market, appears to be in the €50-200 range.
Spaniards vote today in local and regional elections. Water and the drought situation for farmers, housing and sqautters, the former terrorist murderers in Basque separatist election lists and the Vinicius racism in football scandal have all been major national points of contention over the past two or three weeks. The campaign has ended on an ugly democratic note, though, with an explosion of reports of vote buying taking place at the local level.
A non-exhaustive list of the places where some form of electoral fraud has been reported during the final days of this election campaign includes: Melilla (North Africa), Mojácar (Andalusia), Albudeite (Murcia), La Gomera (Canary Islands), Moraleja de Sayago (Castilla y León), Bigastro (Valencia), Las Hurdes (Extremadura), Pozuelo de Calatrava (Castilla la Mancha), Carboneras (Andalusia), Castro Caldelas (Galicia), Paterna del Campo (Andalusia), Mazarrón (Murcia), Vallalba del Alcor (Andalusia), Jaén (Andalusia), Arona (Canary Islands), Valverde del Camino (Huelva).
Some of them are still just accusations between parties but many have already reached the courts, with arrests by the Civil Guard. The price per vote, even with such an untransparent, highly fragmented market, seems to be in the €50-200 range. The methods involved are postal voting and online voting and many include the pressuring of immigrants, the poor or the elderly, for whom €150 means a lot but which is really cheap for a candidate looking to gain access to tens of millions of euros in juicy municipal contracts over the next four years.
If any convictions come out of all the investigations and arrests, the guilty parties could face up to three years in jail. Most of the headlines and media attention have gone to the vote buying involving Socialist Party (PSOE) candidates but looking at the lists of cases, there are several electoral fraud complaints involving Popular Party (PP) candidates too.
Vote buyers in Albudeite (Murcia) showed innovation, offering joints alongside the money. News also broke about a socialist mayor in Maracena (Andalusia) and a senior regional socialist leader being investigated for the kidnap of another socialist councillor, after the judge lifted the secrecy on that investigation; and in Valencia, a socialist candidate resigned after he was arrested and found to be a member of the Latin Kings gang.
Even though the list looks long and generates scandalous headlines and talking points in the last days of the campaign, it’s still only a couple of dozen towns out of over 8,000 that are voting today, and the Spanish voting process itself is normally pretty spotless. Are the two dozen towns just typical dirty local politics, far-removed from national campaigns and ideological aspirations but now more visible thanks to the speed of technolgy and reporting, or are they representative of a broader problem in local politics in Spain, the tip of an iceberg that limited policing resources have only managed to investigate in those few places? What would we discover if we had access to all the Whatsapp messages from all the local candidates across the country? Is there more of this going on than meets the eye and could systemic improvements be made to the voting process to stop it happening again in the future, or is it not worth the effort because it only happens in a few random towns?