Javier Milei’s distrust of the Argentine electoral system is total. Without legal evidence to support it, the ultra presidential candidate denounces to the media that in the general elections of October 22 there were irregularities “that call into question the result.” He thus questions the second place that he obtained with 30% of the votes, behind the Peronist Sergio Massa, who was close to 37%. With a view to the decisive battle on Sunday, Milei further fuels the bonfire of fraud and has clashed with the electoral justice system due to a last-minute change of dynamics in the preparations for the elections. His party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), has delivered a much lower number of ballots than expected by the electoral authorities in the country’s largest province, Buenos Aires. Given the call for attention from the Buenos Aires Electoral Board, Milei’s team confirms that he has decided to retain them and distribute them through his prosecutors to prevent them from being destroyed.
In Argentina, each party is responsible for printing its ballots, but receives significant funds from the Argentine State to do so. For the second round, the figure rose to 258.3 million pesos (about $706,000 at the official value) for both Milei and Massa. Once the ballots have been printed, the parties send them to the Electoral Justice so that they can be distributed through the state mail company and they can reach each polling station. The change of course taken by LLA has set off alarms in the final stretch of a tense campaign.
The fight broke out hours before the televised debate between the candidates. The Buenos Aires Electoral Board warned that LLA had presented a “substantially smaller” number of ballots than suggested and that it had failed to comply with the regulations by doing so in closed cardboard boxes or in black plastic bags “which make their control and verification difficult and delayed.”
In a statement, the organization stressed that, in many cases, the number of bundles received “is not enough to cover all the tables in the municipalities that are being processed for delivery in the mail.” To address this problem, the Electoral Board indicated that it was forced “to take bundles from the contingency bags, or even subtract them from other municipalities for subsequent processing, in order to complete the tables.” According to the Electoral Justice, the party used a similar maneuver in the Argentine capital and other provinces, but on a smaller scale than that detected in the province of Buenos Aires.
Milei’s team counterattacked. They assured that the money received was used to print ballots, but that they will keep many of them until Sunday. In their opinion, the only way they can guarantee that there are valid LLA ballots at all voting stations is extreme oversight. If they detect that they are missing in a dark room, their prosecutors will replace them. “Many more ballots have been printed than are needed; in previous elections we had many destroyed and stolen,” said vice presidential candidate Victoria Villarruel after the debate. “They break them,” agreed the elected representative Lilia Lemoine. On October 22, Lemoine entered into a long and tense discussion with the polling station authorities who wanted to challenge his vote after he had left the dark room with a handful of torn LLA ballots.
The most populated province
The target of the ultra darts is the province of Buenos Aires, the scene of the biggest electoral battle and the main bastion of Peronism. Whoever wins there is almost guaranteed victory at the national level by concentrating 37% of the registry, that is, 13.1 million voters. On October 22, Massa obtained 4.2 million votes, compared to the 2.5 million obtained by Milei. Both are now fighting for the support of the third force in that election, Together for Change, which obtained 2.3 million votes in Buenos Aires, 24% of the total.
Milei’s party would have had to deliver a bundle of 350 ballots to each of the 38,074 polling stations. In many cases, they did not reach 100. The representative of LLA, Santiago Viola, assured that the party has not failed to comply with any legal resolution “and has accompanied ballots for all voting stations in the amount that is estimated necessary for the start of voting. the chose”.
Their prosecutors will be provided with ballots and when they detect that there are no more, they will replace them. “Exercising the freedom to choose, and in order to avoid breakage, theft and theft of ballots, such as those that occurred throughout the country in previous elections, we have made the decision to redouble our efforts through our prosecutors so that “They are the ones who take care of and replace our ballots when necessary,” he added.
LLA’s complaints of irregularities are limited to the public sphere and have not been presented to Justice. For this reason, his Peronist rival believes that this is a strategy similar to the one that Donald Trump already used in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to sow doubts in the event of a potential unfavorable result. “It strikes me that in the primary, when the result favored Milei, there was no suspicion and in the runoff, because they can lose, suspicion is established,” Massa responded in an interview with EL PAÍS.
The second round is held on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s return to democracy. The strength of the system will be tested.
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