16 embassies will send CERA ballots by regular mail, not certified

CERA ballots lose certified mail at 16 embassies

An envelope with ballots leaves an embassy, passes through hands no one identifies, and reaches a ballot box. That is the route that, according to the information released about the public postal operator, has for years safeguarded the vote of Spaniards living abroad. The novelty that lit the fuse: according to a message circulating on social media, sixteen embassies would have announced they will not send ballots by certified mail, but by regular post. In other words: fewer signed records at every link in the chain.

The change was not born in an embassy. According to the published information, the procedure was modified under the presidency of Juan Manuel Serrano at the head of the postal operator, a post he held from July 2018 to December 2023, and on the staff he overlapped with Leire Díez, then director of Philately and Institutional Relations. The modification allowed mail to be sorted in batches instead of one by one, which in practice dilutes the individual traceability of each ballot.

What sorting in batches instead of one by one means

The difference is less bureaucratic than it seems. Under the previous system, each envelope was tracked as a unit: it was known when it entered, when it left, and where it went. With batch sorting, control is exercised over the whole. If a lot is misplaced, delayed, or disappears, reconstructing the route of a specific ballot becomes an act of faith.

Hence the headline making the rounds: more than half of CERA votes would arrive without certified mail. The figure is not a settled calculation, but the logical consequence of sixteen diplomatic missions giving up certified shipping. And hence the suspicion running through the story: ballot harvesting without traceability.

The 2023 precedent and the seat that changed hands

It is worth separating the levels, because the discussion mixes them. In 2023 there was an episode involving CERA votes that moved a Madrid seat: it was taken from the PSOE (the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) and given to the PP (the Popular Party). The outcome had far-reaching political consequences, because it left the PSOE without a margin and forced a deal with Junts. Some argue that transfer was the real election rigging; against that weighs the argument that CERA votes move little volume due to low turnout, and that the usual suspect is postal voting, not the overseas vote.

The nuance matters. If the problem were the CERA electoral roll —residents who vote from abroad— control would be practically impossible. But logistically it is not a simple process, and that is why the focus has fallen on the postal chain.

Who watches the chain and who answers for it

The question left hanging is one of governance: if the public operator changes the procedure, who audits the result? The institutional answer does not appear in the available information. What does appear is the chronology: a change signed by someone who arrived at the operator at the same time the Prime Minister arrived at Moncloa. The timing alone proves nothing, but it feeds distrust.

And distrust, in an electoral system, is a liability. Every uncertified link is a sustancia ilegal through which the fraud narrative creeps in, with or without evidence.

What can be demanded without changing the law

There is technical room without touching the legal framework: restoring individual tracking of shipments, publishing the postal operator's audits, and detailing how many ballots travel by each route. None of that requires legal reform. It requires will.

Meanwhile, the figure that unsettles is not that of the sixteen embassies. It is that of the votes which, in the next election, no one will be able to prove where they were.