Unionist fraud in 2017 vote?

The con­test be­tween Cata­lan and Span­ish in­sti­tu­tions has been un­equal, as any ob­server may grasp. Not with­out a cer­tain amount of cyn­i­cism, some argue that any cen­tral state is en­ti­tled to use all means avail­able to rule over its ter­ri­tory. In fact, self-de­scribed de­moc­rats have jus­ti­fied every move used by Spain against Cat­alo­nia. It seems it did not mat­ter that by using brute po­lice force to deny the right of peo­ple to vote, Madrid showed a ruth­less au­thor­i­tar­ian com­mit­ment to crush the Cata­lans.

In­deed, a tur­bu­lent pe­riod fol­lowed the ref­er­en­dum, in which the main Cata­lan in­sti­tu­tions where sup­pressed across the board, from par­lia­ment to gov­ern­ment. Re­gional elec­tions were called straight away, in a move that was, plau­si­bly, forced by Brus­sels. In­deed, such was the rush that they were held not on the tra­di­tional Sun­day, but on a work­ing day – Thurs­day 21 being the only date avail­able be­fore Christ­mas.

The new polls where meant to set­tle the dis­pute by show­ing whether Cata­lan cit­i­zens ac­cepted Madrid’s iron rule, or if the tug-of-war be­tween both sides should con­tinue. In due ac­cor­dance with to its rel­e­vance, the turnout was the high­est ever in Spain, with up to 80% of the elec­torate par­tic­i­pat­ing. The sur­pris­ing new vic­tory of the pro-in­de­pen­dence side was a huge set­back for the whole of union­ism, in­clud­ing Madrid, which no­tice­ably played the Ciu­dadanos card, the party of Span­ish na­tion­al­ism in Cat­alo­nia. It was meant to show the world that, first and fore­most, Cata­lans de­sired a restora­tion of the “con­sti­tu­tional order”, no mat­ter what, to draw back from the sup­posed chaos caused by the in­de­pen­dence process.

With no room for naivety, Madrid has shown its will to cross any de­mo­c­ra­tic red line in order to stop Cata­lan self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. That has in­cluded pass­ing a de­cree just days after the ref­er­en­dum, by means of which com­pa­nies could fast-track the mov­ing of their head of­fices. Fol­low­ing this, in the midst of the heavy po­lit­i­cal tur­moil – in­clud­ing di­rect pres­sure from the king him­self – some rel­e­vant firms did in­deed move their head­quar­ters out­side Cat­alo­nia. Nonethe­less, the eco­nomic Ar­maged­don as an­nounced by the union­ist side – in­clud­ing its ma­jor­ity servile media – did not hap­pen. Even the Fi­nan­cial Times has re­cently re­ported that, on the con­trary, Cat­alo­nia has dis­played un­in­ter­rupted su­pe­rior eco­nomic per­for­mance to Spain as a whole.

Given the high stakes in those par­tic­u­lar elec­tions, in the back­ground there was the issue of whether the state, through the many dif­fer­ent means avail­able to it, would re­sort to di­rect elec­toral fraud. After all, Madrid has not been shy in using, for ex­am­ple, fake anony­mous re­ports (fab­ri­cated by the se­cret po­lice) to dis­credit pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers while on the cam­paign trail. A re­cent study by Cata­lan econ­o­mist David Ros shows that the level of fraud was un­de­ni­ably suf­fi­cient to alter the re­sults. If not ex­treme, the fraud was sig­nif­i­cant, enough to stop the pro-in­de­pen­dence side at­tain­ing (or slightly sur­pass­ing) 50% of the elec­torate.

Mr Ros high­lights some strik­ing anom­alies within the elec­toral process, such as the elec­toral com­mit­tee being only com­posed of mem­bers of pro-union­ist par­ties.

Re­gard­ing the vot­ing process it­self, Ros pin­points three main areas of ac­tual fraud: postal votes, out­bound res­i­dents votes and spot vot­ing. After a doc­u­mented analy­sis, Mr Ros has de­tected a bias to­wards Ciu­dadanos of up to six extra MPs, with at least four of them taken from pro-in­de­pen­dence par­ties. In rel­a­tive terms, that trans­lates to the pro-in­de­pen­dence side at­tain­ing al­most 50% of the bal­lots, and the union­ists just below 42% (the re­main­ing al­most 8% goes to par­ties with an un­de­fined po­si­tion on Cat­alo­nia’s in­de­pen­dence). Con­sid­er­ing the three key up­com­ing elec­tions, the fac­tors noted above are worth tak­ing into ac­count, chiefly if the state is again keen to play dirty tricks to thwart a fair elec­toral processes.