In a democracy, should it be a crime to deceive people to obtain their vote?

Today I want to open a reflection on an issue that has concerned me for many years but about which I hardly see any debates.

The eagerness to bury liberal democracy alive and the alternatives of the gravediggers
Six Spanish political parties support dictatorships, and all six are left-wing

In many countries, misleading advertising is not only illegal, but also a crime. For example, in the European Union there is a 1984 directive created to unify the laws of member states on this issue. This directive considers that "misleading advertising carries the risk of leading consumers to make decisions, when purchasing goods or using services, that are detrimental to them.

In Spain, misleading advertising is considered illegal under Article 3 of the General Advertising Law. This form of advertising is also defined in the Unfair Competition Law, Article 5 of which states: "Any conduct containing false information or information that, even if true, by its content or presentation induces or may induce error in the recipients, and is likely to alter their economic behavior, is considered unfair due to its misleading nature." Article 7 of that law also refers to "deceptive omissions":

"It is considered unfair to omit or conceal information necessary for the recipient to make or be able to make a decision regarding their economic behavior with due knowledge of the facts. It is also unfair if the information provided is unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous, not provided at the appropriate time, or if the commercial purpose of the practice is not disclosed when it is not evident from the context."

Besides being illegal, misleading advertising is also a crime in Spain. It is defined in Article 282 of the Penal Code:

"Manufacturers or merchants who, in their offers or advertising of products or services, make false claims or state uncertain characteristics about them, in such a way that they may cause serious and manifest harm to consumers, shall be punished with a prison sentence of six months to one year or a fine of 12 to 24 months, without prejudice to the penalty that may be applied for the commission of other crimes."

Interestingly, Spanish law does not provide for any sanctions for misleading advertising when it is carried out by a political party. This is based on the fact that Spanish law considers advertising to be the offering of a product in exchange for a price, with the advertiser's intention to make a profit. But doesn't a political party also have an intention to make a profit that should be subject to regulation against potential abuses in advertising?

The Royal Spanish Academy defines "lucro" (profit) as follows: "Gain or profit derived from something." Obtaining an office in an election is very lucrative, not only in economic terms (due to the subsidies received by the political party and the generous salaries many elected officials receive). Furthermore, in politics, this profit translates into something much more serious than mere economic gain: the acquisition of political power, a power whose abuses are one of the major problems that have plagued all democracies since their inception.

Deception in politics goes beyond simply making false promises, whether because they are impossible to keep or because the politician making them has no intention whatsoever of fulfilling them. Even more serious is the case of politicians and parties that pretend to be something they are not. Last year I already pointed out here six cases of Spanish parties with parliamentary representation that openly support dictatorships. All these parties openly define themselves as democratic, a deception that is especially outrageous when we talk about parties affiliated with a totalitarian movement, communism, which has sown dozens of dictatorships.

It's surprising that in a hyper-regulated society like ours, where everything is subject to all kinds of rules, there isn't a single one that penalizes politicians for lying and deceiving. Of course, if there are no laws penalizing politicians' deception, it's because the laws are passed by the very same people who could be sanctioned for having deceived their voters to gain their support. In this sense, what would truly be groundbreaking in a democracy would be a party that proposed penalizing electoral fraud.

I've been searching high and low to see if any party has proposed something like this in Spain, and from what I can see, only Vox proposed introducing a crime of electoral fraud: "When it is proven that a party has blatantly lied when, being able to carry out the reforms it has promised, it fails to do so, that is a monumental fraud that causes terrifying damage, because you have used national sovereignty to seize power, take the instruments of power, and then deceive those who voted for you", stated Javier Ortega Smith, then Secretary General of Vox, in 2019.

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Image: 愚木混株 Yumu.