An Election without a Census in Spain A crucial aspect of functioning democracy is the existence of an ultimate source of ground truth: the judiciary. When the US Supreme Court said in 2000: stop counting, GW Bush won against Gore, that was it. In Spain's coming November general elections, there will not be a ground truth on who should vote. The mess comes from the interpretation of the "ley de nietos", an additional disposition of the "Democratic Memory Law" which plainly applies to the children and grandchildren of those that had to leave Spain for political or ideological reasons under Franco ("que, como consecuencia de haber sufrido exilio por razones políticas, ideológicas o de creencia o de orientación e identidad sexual, hubieran perdido o renunciado a la nacionalidad española"). We know this is an explicit choice of the legislator because my then political party, Ciudadanos, tabled an amendment broadening the law's coverage to anyone who had left the country and it was rejected by Congress (DSCD-14-PL-202, p. 65). The Constitution says that nationality is acquired or lost in accordance to what the law establishes (art 11.1), so the questio nof who the law applies to seemed settled. But 6 days after the law was published, a General Director of the Justice ministry issued an instruction ordering all consulates how to apply the law: it says that, even though the law seems to refer only to children and grandchildren of exiles, in fact she finds it more in accordance with the legislator intent ("una interpretación más acorde con la verdadera voluntad del legislador y el espíritu de la ley") to interpret it according to an amendment explicitly rejected by Congress: the paragraph must be interpreted as covering all descendants of originally Spanish parents or grandparents who departed Spain; besides, anyone who departed between 1936 and 1955 will be presumed exiles ("Se presumirá la condición de exiliado respecto de todos los españoles que salieron de España entre el 18 de julio de 1936 y el 31 de diciembre de 1955".) The scale of the disputed votes is large: by March 31, 2026, consulates had received more than 1.2 million applications, 545,000 of which they had approved and registered 306,500. The disputed voters are the 163,020 people who obtained nationality through the exile route and were in the CERA on August 1. Spain has 37.5 million potential voters. The system is proportional using D'Hondt's rules, and so the last seat in many provinces is allocated by a few hundred votes. Many new voters registered in small provinces where their grandparents came from in Galicia, Asturias, the Canaries, Extremadura and Andalusia and could easy tip the balance. In the last election, a Madrid seat changed hands because of these votes. On September 10th, the Supreme Court ordered (with 5-1 majority) the census Office and the consular registries to suspend provisionally (while the decision is made) the electoral effects of the registrations, exempting documented exiles . The Minister of Foreign Affairs has not complied with the order. According to the Supreme Court "the level of compliance with the order is ... inexistent or, at least, unknown". The potentially very serious problem is that there is no agreed "referee" on this. The Supreme Court is more balanced, resulting from a previous pact PP-PSOE with a president from the Progressive Judges association, while the Constitutional Court has a 7-5 majority that includes Sánchez’s former justice minister and a former Moncloa staffer. The Constitutional courthas been asked to overrule the Supreme Court. The calendar is really tight. The census office mails the ballots starting on October 24th. Voters abroad vote in consulates 21st to 26th of november. If the election is close, whoever loses a seat in one of those key provinces gets the possibility of appealing to one of two courts. While in Florida there was only one answer, in Spain, it will likely be 2.