ABSTRACT
In the 2007 legislative elections, public disenchantment with the Moroccan political system was on clear display. Two in three Moroccans boycotted the much-anticipated election despite repeated appeals by the King for voters to go the polls and cast their vote (Enhaili 2007a; Sater 2009). Worse, among the 37 percent of the 15 million people who bothered to vote, one in five cast spoiled/ blank ballots, making the real electoral participation rate a mere 18 percent (see Enhaili 2008). With 19 percent of the ballots invalid, the spoiled/blank ballot voters were 1 million Moroccans, a number that exceeded the combined total number of votes received by the top two parties: the conservative Istiqlal and the Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD) (Sehimi 2008a). If the number of blank and spoiled ballots was 19 percent at the national level, it was a whopping 30 percent in some of the kingdom’s big cities.
