The always obeyed commanding voice of Cristina Kirchner in the Senate might find a tough challenge if the opposition manages to overcome the obstacle of Kirchnerism in the Chamber of Deputies to the implementation of the single paper ballot. The thing is At least three senators from the ruling interbloc in the Upper House support or presented projects to modify the electoral system and eradicate the party ballot that is used today.
One of them is the Corrientes Carlos Espinolawho in dialogue with LA NACION assured that “we should not be afraid of these transformation processes.”
“In Corrientes I defended the application of the single paper ballot and I intend to maintain my position,” said Espínola, who has been fighting in his province to end the collector system, which leads to up to 60 different ballots in the dark rooms in the provincial elections.
The senator for Corrientes is not the only official in favor of the paper ballot. Edgardo Kueider promoted it when he was secretary of the Government of Entre Ríos, while the Jujuy Guillermo Snopek presented in August of last year, together with the macrista Esteban Bullricha project to establish the single paper ballot.
In addition, a history of Peronism such as Adolfo Rodriguez Saa (San Luis) also put his signature to an initiative which established the use of the “single voting ballot”, as it appears in the text which he presented in 2013. Unlike the one signed by Snopek and Bullrich, the project of the former San Luis governor has already lost its validity and was sent to the archive.
All of these antecedents warning lights for Cristina Kirchnerwhich might suffer a heavy defeat if the debate on the implementation of the single paper ballot lands in the Senate.
It is that if at least two pro-government senators joined the reform movement promoted by the opposition in the lower house, the bill might become law in the Senate. This is so because they would join the 33 legislators of Together for Change, the dissident Peronist Alejandra Vigo (We do for Córdoba) and the provincial Alberto Weretilnek (Together We Are Río Negro) to reach the absolute majority of 37 votes required by the Constitution. to reform the electoral system.
The situation does not seem easy if one takes into account that the vice president has already spoken out publicly once morest the system. “You vote for a list of deputies as if it were a string of sausages and garlic,” Cristina Kirchner said on May 6, when she received an award from a university in Chaco.
A few days following the one in which the president folded Alberto Fernandez, who criticized the opposition because they want to change “one of the few things that is going well in Argentina.” It was, perhaps, the anticipation of a future veto before the eventual sanction of a law that ends with the party ballot.
“Today we all know that the single electronic ballot is a danger, but the single paper ballot is friendlier, healthier, and closer to the people,” Espínola justified his position despite the contrary voices of the high command of the government coalition.
Although both Snopek and Rodríguez Saá have not spoken out on the subject, they have left traces of their positions in the foundations of their respective projects.
“We are convinced that this form of voting promotes a qualitative improvement in the Argentine political system,” Snopek and Bullrich maintain in their project.
The man from Jujuy, who chairs the Constitutional Affairs Commission, adds that “the Single Ballot system grants transparency and equality to the electoral system, it more reliably represents the choice of voters by conjuring up practices such as the so-called “chain vote” or adulteration , destruction or theft of ballots”; before noting that “the most relevant” of the change is that “it guarantees the presence of the entire electoral offer on election day in each voting center.”
“Since the entire electoral offer is on the same ballot, it is guaranteed that the voter has at his disposal the possibility of choosing the one of his preference,” concludes Snopek in his foundations.
For his part, Rodríguez Saá argued in his bill that “our electoral system shows obvious signs of weakness.” Moreover, the San Luis wrote nine years ago that “many times” the basic right to elect and be elected is not guaranteed “due to the advance of distorting practices that prevent its real exercise and that threaten the transparency of the elections.”
However, in politics two plus two is not always four. For example, today Snopek chairs a key commission for Kirchnerism, which considerably reduces the margins of rebellion; while Rodríguez Saá left his dissidence to embrace the “Peronist unity” forged by Cristina Kirchner in 2019.