The suspicion of massive fraud in voting by mail in Melilla has led the Electoral Board of the autonomous city to add a security requirement to the procedure: the requirement to present the DNI at the Post Office when delivering the vote.

This does not imply that until now you could vote without identifying yourself. In accordance with the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (Loreg), the citizen must identify himself with his ID in two of the three phases of voting by correspondence.

The first takes place in the Post Office. The law establishes that the request to vote by mail must be made “in person”. And that the Post Office official “will require the interested party to show their national identity document and verify the signature's coincidence”. The photocopy of the document will not be accepted “in any case”. The procedure can be done digitally, but an Electronic DNI certificate or a valid digital certificate is required.

The postal service then forwards the request to the Electoral Census Office, which makes the necessary checks. If everything is correct, issue the certification that you are registered in the census and note that that person is going to vote by mail and will no longer be able to do so in person.

In this second phase, the electoral office sends the necessary documentation “by certified mail” to the voter's address: ballot papers, envelopes, the census certificate, an envelope with the address of the voting station -in which you will enter your vote and the certificate – and an explanation of how to complete all of the above.

This delivery must be in person. The voter has to sign “personally” for the receipt of the documents, “after proving their identity”. The law specifies that, if you are not at home when the postman passes by, you will have to go to an office to receive the documentation “prior accreditation” of your identity.

In a last phase, the citizen must send his vote by certified mail, inserted in the envelope with the address of his polling station-. This management is done again at the Post Office, although the law does not establish that the citizen has to identify himself for this shipment.

This is where the Electoral Board of Melilla has intervened. Since May 18, the electoral authority of Melilla requires showing at the Post Office “personal identification of the voter through DNI, passport or other valid document, in the remittance of the vote by mail addressed to the polling station […], of so that the delivery of the certified envelope containing the vote by mail for its remittance to the polling station is personal by the voter”.

The non-requirement of the DNI when presenting the vote facilitated fraud, since the envelopes could be delivered to the Post Office by cronies of the criminal plot. The new obligation to identify only affected Melilla, where there is only one post office. The Police have implemented a device to prevent bags with purchased votes from leaving the autonomous city and being delivered to other Post Offices, where there is no obligation to identify oneself. In addition, the Electoral Board has extended the ID requirement to any delivery of votes addressed to a polling station in Melilla from any point in Spain.

What in theory the criminal network cannot avoid – unless it uses false documentation or has a lack of control in the Post Office – is that it has to be the purchased voter who claims the electoral documentation and receives it in the hand of the postman, in both cases showing identification.

A few days ago, the Police received complaints of the theft of electoral documentation from postmen in Melilla, supposedly the one sent by the census office to those who had requested it and that the plot could be carried out behind their backs.. The Police have also intervened here, providing an escort to those who distribute the ballots for postal voting.