There’s a fair amount of whinging going on about a recent change to the Electoral Law (LOREG) that attempts to exclude small, marginal parties from the elections, mainly from the aforementioned small, marginal parties.
The change in the law, approved in Congress over the summer, states that any party that does not currently have any representation in the region in which it intends to stand must obtain a “voters guarantee” of at least 0,1% of the electorate before being permitted to stand in the elections.
In practise, this means that any party other than the big three who wants to run in the forthcoming national elections in the province of Almería must obtain 500 avales, or certified signatures, before their names are added to the ballot papers. Not just signatures – full blown copies of DNI and addresses. So much for a “secret vote”.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Spain took one large step towards democracy by signing the Constitution and then went for a long siesta.