“As you can imagine, a lot of people already have tickets for the summer trips, so we can’t recruit any of them,” an anonymous Leon city election official told reporters. He added that election day also coincided with a major music festival, depriving the commission of some 200 candidates.
In Spain, the members of the polling stations are designated by lot among the total number of citizens of the country who have the right to vote. However, if the candidate has a good reason, for example, a ticket that he bought before May 29, when the day of voting was scheduled, then he is exempt from duties. Otherwise, failure to appear on the agenda is punishable by a fine and up to one year in prison.
But that doesn’t stop the Spaniards, who don’t feel like spending 12 hours counting 70-euro ballots, even under threat of sanction.
Police, who are supposed to serve subpoenas to designated polling station officials, have also encountered difficulties: citizens simply won’t open the doors or hide from them.
If the recruitment fails in the next two weeks, the authorities will have to resort to extreme measures: appointing the members of the electoral commission directly from among the citizens who turn out to vote.
“I always tell my friends not to go vote in the morning,” an anonymous election committee employee half-jokingly commented on this rule.
