Morocco’s September 23 legislative elections unfolded with markedly fewer disputes than the previous vote, according to a fresh assessment from the country’s Public Prosecution. Mourad El Alami, who heads the unit tracking electoral offenses within the Attorney General’s office, disclosed that only 403 complaints were filed nationwide this year, compared with 1,071 during the 2021 ballot — a drop of nearly two-thirds that officials attribute to tighter oversight and a smoother electoral process overall.
Grievances reached prosecutors through two channels: direct filings at local courts and a dedicated online platform set up to let citizens flag irregularities remotely without having to travel to a courthouse. Predictably, polling day itself generated the heaviest traffic of complaints, as judicial teams had mobilized additional staff to handle the expected surge.
What stood out most was the speed of the judicial response. Investigations triggered by these complaints were wrapped up in an average of 48 hours, a turnaround the Public Prosecution is holding up as proof that election-related cases were handled with both rigor and urgency. The bulk of the violations fell under ordinary criminal law and stemmed from acts committed during the campaign period — among them physical altercations, verbal abuse, and breaches of candidates’ or voters’ privacy.
Notably, social media played an increasingly central role in this wave of complaints, with a rise in cases tied to online defamation and the unauthorized sharing of personal information. Separately, four complaints concerned the failure to hand over voting record sheets to candidates’ representatives in a handful of districts; two were dismissed for lack of evidence, while the remaining two are still under investigation.
The prosecution official stressed that the law was applied strictly from start to finish, insisting that judicial oversight never let up — from the opening of the campaign through the final declaration of results. The report reflects Morocco’s broader push to shore up public trust in its representative institutions and to demonstrate that one of the country’s most closely watched democratic exercises in recent years was conducted transparently and fairly.
