Polling station duty: €65 for 16 hours and a letter that leaves you no choice

Polling station duty: €65 for up to 16 hours

What do I do if I get the letter for polling station duty? How much do they pay and can you refuse? Every election brings the same scene back to doorways: someone knocks, asks for your signature and, from then on, Sunday is mortgaged. With notifications for the 28 April vote already distributed —according to one participant, the draw was held around the 15th and the letters are arriving until the 18th— thousands of Spaniards are discovering they have been chosen as a member, substitute or presiding officer.

The reference figure is €65. It isn’t a wage: it’s an allowance, compensation for fulfilling an obligation, not a salary. That legal nature matters, because it gives rise to a recurring doubt —will it be deducted from my unemployment benefit?— and also an uncomfortable feeling: some claim those €65 later didn’t show up in the data held by Hacienda (Spain’s tax agency), fuelling the idea of a payment that leaves little trace.

Substitute, full member and why some put in 15 hours while others put in none

The role printed on the letter completely changes the day. Substitutes must report at 8 a.m., even though the polling station doesn’t open until 9: that extra hour is a buffer so no one arrives late. If the full member shows up, the substitute goes home and doesn’t earn a cent. If not, they stay, and the day stretches to the count, which can finish in the early hours. Anyone who has served on a polling station committee sums it up bluntly: 15 hours straight crossing off names and counting ballots.

The fine print of the draw also deals out luck. Being the second full member, for example, reduces your room for manoeuvre: you’re stuck there all day. Some estimate that being a substitute removes a third of the chances of ending up shut in, though the relief doesn’t last long. As for food, the thread assumes members take turns, and a sandwich doesn’t make up for the slog.

The notification: from a hand-delivered letter to a visit from the police

The procedure isn’t just any letter. They will hand it to you and ask for your signature. From that moment you are bound by the appointment and can only miss it for demonstrable force majeure, and the list is short. If you don’t sign, the notification is left in your mailbox for you to collect. And depending on the city, when the postal worker finds no one in, it’s the local police who try to deliver it a few days before the vote. There are accounts of notices at 21:50 and homes visited repeatedly before the person is found.

The pursuit has a practical limit: according to those who have been through it, they don’t usually come looking for you at work, and some town halls —Córdoba, Irun, Logroño, Pamplona, San Sebastián, Segovia or Valladolid— let you check online whether you’ve been selected, something some prefer not to look at in case logging in counts as notification.

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Which reasons allow you to be excused and which don’t

Legal excuses are limited and well known: being over 65 and under 70, disability, receiving a pension for absolute permanent incapacity or severe disability, temporary sick leave from work, pregnancy from the sixth month and maternity leave, being held in prison or a psychiatric institution, and injuries or ailments that prevent you from carrying out the duties, even if they haven’t led to sick leave. Outside that, there’s very little leeway.

Hence many talk of electoral insubordination and simply not opening the door. The instruction circulating is clear: if you don’t sign, the letter is returned as undeliverable and they move on to the next person on the list. In some places the postal worker gives up on delivery and goes straight to the substitute; in others, they keep trying with the police.

The degree trick to avoid presiding over a polling station

There’s a detail few people know: to preside over a polling station committee you need to have bachillerato (upper secondary qualification) or equivalent. Hence some register on the municipal roll as if they only had primary education to avoid presiding, the most exposed seat of the day. The problem is that the town hall can cross-check the data: some declared they had the old school graduate certificate and a month later received a letter reminding them they had a university degree, with fifteen days to appeal.

The recommendation from those who have been through it is to appeal: it’s free and it costs the administration officials’ time. They are the ones who have to prove that you don’t have that qualification, and neither a social media profile nor a namesake with a degree counts as proof.

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What happens if you don’t show up for polling station duty

In the thread it’s recalled that failing to appear is classified as a crime. However, there’s a gap between the legal threat and practice: bringing hundreds of individual proceedings, with no possibility of joining them together and no guarantee of conviction, costs more than it recovers. Hours of judges and court officials in an already collapsed judicial system. There are known cases of people who didn’t show up a second time and received neither a financial nor a judicial penalty, though such episodes are aired more to deter the rest.

The pragmatic conclusion: the probability of ending up with a final conviction is low, but the risk exists and the battle is fought more on deterrence than in court.

Digital voting and the example of voluntary registration

The underlying question was raised by the very start of the discussion: why not use a distributed consensus system for a digital vote, fast and anonymous, instead of bits of paper all day. The answer that emerges in the exchange points to registration: in the United States citizens register to vote voluntarily, and those who don’t can’t vote, but they also aren’t called for polling stations or juries. In Spain that registration is automatic, and that’s why leaving the electoral roll is, in practical terms, impossible.

There is an indirect route: registering abroad moves you to the CERA (overseas voters register) and exempts you from the draw, but when you register as a resident in Spain again you re-enter the electoral roll. Those who vote by post don’t escape either: they also enter the polling station draw. The system, in short, still beats hands down the citizen who just wanted to spend Sunday at home.

And meanwhile, the only truly effective defence against the letter remains the same as ever: not being there when they call.