by Christian K. Caruzo, Breitbart:
Argentina successfully debuted its new single paper ballot in Sunday’s election, marking a victory for President Javier Milei, who spearheaded efforts for the new, massively overhauled and pro-transparency electoral system.
For decades, until Sunday’s midterm legislative elections, Argentina used a complex ballot system that had its roots in early 20th century electoral reforms. The old system, codified into law after the country’s return to democracy in the 1980s, required that each Argentine political party, using public funding, design, print, and distribute individual ballots for their respective candidates in voting stations.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
An Argentine voter, upon verifying his or her identity to the station’s electoral authorities, was given an empty signed envelope before heading to a “dark room” where the voter, depending on the nature of the election, had to introduce the individually printed ballots of his or her chosen party before casting a vote in the box.
The individual ballot system was widely criticized throughout the years as – even though the act of destroying, stealing, replacing, tampering with, or concealing the ballots is an electoral crime in Argentina punishable with prison time – numerous instances of voters denouncing the theft of ballots at voting stations were documented over the years. A theft of a party’s ballots would leave voters unable to cast their votes due to a lack of ballots for his or her chosen candidate. In light of the continued instances of incidents involving ballots, political parties largely relied on men or women who acted as voluntary poll watchers to ensure the correct and transparent development of elections at voting stations.
In one such instance, during the 2023 presidential runoff election, a 16-year-old boy was arrested for stealing an “excessive” number of Javier Milei ballots out of the voting dark room, concealing them in a fanny pack. President Milei’s Liberty Advances party successfully filed a court request that allowed all participating political parties’ members to watch over ballot boxes once the runoff election was over.
Shortly after taking office in December 2023, Milei spearheaded efforts to overhaul Argentina’s individual ballot system after unsuccessful attempts by lawmakers over the past decades, leading to Congress successfully approving a reform in October 2024 that replaced the cumbersome system with a new Single Paper Ballot (BUP) that finally debuted at Sunday’s midterm elections.
