Multiple voting is not a risk for the primaries

Escuchar la entrada

By Ro­drigo Ibar­rola

On July 8, the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE) fi­nally aknowl­edged the Na­tional Con­cer­ta­tion. In the same act, it also re­solved the con­tro­versy over the use of the Per­ma­nent Civic Reg­istry (RCP) for the for­ma­tion of the elec­toral roll to be used in the in­ter­nal elec­tions of De­cem­ber 18 with a rul­ing in fa­vor of the Con­cer­ta­tion. As a re­sult of this new de­vel­op­ment, var­i­ous doubts have arisen, both from the Col­orado Party and from TSJE of­fi­cials.

From within the Col­orado Party, the Car­tismo mem­bers, such as Con­gress­man Basilio “Bachi” Núñez and the par­ty’s own rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Ed­uardo González, have re­ferred to the res­o­lu­tion  as non­sense, since the RCP in­cludes both those dis­qual­i­fied as well as mil­i­tary and po­lice of­fi­cers.

At this point, it should be clar­i­fied that the RCP is not a reg­is­ter it­self, but is the com­plete and raw list of per­sons reg­is­tered as vot­ers who are eigh­teen years old or will turn eigh­teen by the day im­me­di­ately pre­ced­ing the elec­tions, pro­vided they are not in­cluded in the grounds for ex­clu­sion of Ar­ti­cle 114 of the Elec­toral Code. In ad­di­tion, the RCP is per­ma­nently up­dated and purged, ex­clud­ing per­sons who are de­ceased and de­clared pre­sumed dead by a court rul­ing, per­sons dis­qual­i­fied or de­clared in­ter­dicted, re­peated reg­is­tra­tions, reg­is­tra­tions made fraud­u­lently, those ab­sent from the coun­try for more than five years, and those crossed out (art. 149). This is done on the ba­sis of com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the Civil Reg­istry of the Sta­tus of Per­sons, judges and courts, as well as the Gen­eral Di­rec­torate of the Armed Forces Re­cruit­ment and Mo­bi­liza­tion Ser­vice. Af­ter the of­fi­cial cleanse and the pe­riod for ob­jec­tions and com­plaints, what is known as the “voter list” is drawn up, which is the de­fin­i­tive list of vot­ers reg­is­tered in the Per­ma­nent Civic Reg­istry who are el­i­gi­ble to vote.

There­fore, the as­ser­tion made by his de­trac­tors such as “Bachi” or the lawyer Gon­za­lez, re­sponds more to a po­lit­i­cal mo­ti­va­tion rather than a le­gal one, since all this process is known by them, or, it should be, at least by the at­tor­ney-in-fact.

On the other hand, on July 15, Ñan­dutí pub­lished an ar­ti­cle called “Five mil­lion Paraguayans could vote twice with the use of the Na­tional Reg­is­ter, warns Lju­betic,” a head­line that im­plies the ex­is­tence of an im­mi­nent dan­ger of mas­sive dou­ble vot­ing, based on the de­c­la­ra­tions of the di­rec­tor of elec­toral processes of the TSJE, Car­los María Lju­betic. How­ever, this head­line does not re­flect what was re­ally ex­pressed by the di­rec­tor, who only pointed out that this pos­si­bil­ity al­ways ex­ists dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the in­ter­nal party elec­tions due to the amount of dou­ble af­fil­i­a­tions that are reg­is­tered in the par­ties, and that the dif­fer­ence on this oc­ca­sion lies in the num­ber of vot­ers with the ca­pac­ity to do so on De­cem­ber 18, which would be about five mil­lion vot­ers. This, by no means, means that this is go­ing to hap­pen. In this re­gard, let’s look at some num­bers.

as strategic as the idea of the ruling party diverting resources -and votes- to influence the National Concertation’s internal elections may seem, it is unlikely to materialize, given the competitiveness that always surrounds the ANR’s internal elections, especially with regard to the presidential candidates. In this dispute, in practice, it is impossible to estimate the votes needed to finally win the presidency.

Of the elec­toral uni­verse of the 2021 mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions (Table 1), 22.3% of the to­tal of 4,644,536 vot­ers of the na­tional elec­toral roll reg­is­tered mul­ti­ple af­fil­i­a­tion, that is, about 1,037,371 peo­ple. Ac­cord­ing to the logic of the di­rec­tor of elec­toral reg­is­tra­tion of the TSJE, this would be the num­ber of peo­ple ca­pa­ble of dou­ble vot­ing.

Table 1. Na­tional Reg­is­ter, by af­fil­i­a­tion, Mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties 2021

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion with data from the TSJE.

Cer­tainly, this num­ber rises with the rul­ing of the TSJE in re­la­tion to the elec­toral roll to be used by the Na­tional Con­cer­ta­tion. How­ever, there is an er­ror in the fig­ures in Lju­bet­ic’s logic, since only those af­fil­i­ated to a party would be el­i­gi­ble for dou­ble vot­ing, but these do not add up to five mil­lion, but 3,471,380.

With re­gards to the dou­ble vote, the avail­able data cor­re­sponds to the mu­nic­i­pal in­ter­nal elec­tions held in 2015, when they were not yet car­ried out si­mul­ta­ne­ously in their en­tirety, so much so that on one day the elec­tions cor­re­spond­ing to the ANR and the PLRA were held, and on an­other day those of the other par­ties. The re­ports of the TSJE, which an­a­lyzed the elec­tions of the ANR, PLRA and the Frente Guasu coali­tion, re­ported that, out of a to­tal of 1,606,824 vot­ers, only 3,240 peo­ple in­curred in such a sit­u­a­tion, that is, 0.2% (Table 2).

Table 2. Vot­ers, In­ter­nal Elec­tions for the 2015 Mu­nic­i­pal Elec­tions

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion with data from the TSJE.

It should be noted that the Elec­toral Code, in its Ar­ti­cle 323, es­tab­lishes a penalty of one to three years im­pris­on­ment plus a fine of 200 min­i­mum wages (₲19,617,800) for those who vote more than once. In ad­di­tion, the tech­nol­ogy ex­ist­ing to­day, makes this de­tectable very quickly, which once dis­cov­ered is re­ported to the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor’s Of­fice with sup­port­ing doc­u­ments.

On the other hand, as strate­gic as the idea of the rul­ing party di­vert­ing re­sources -and votes- to in­flu­ence the Na­tional Con­cer­ta­tion’s in­ter­nal elec­tions may seem, it is un­likely to ma­te­ri­al­ize, given the com­pet­i­tive­ness that al­ways sur­rounds the AN­R’s in­ter­nal elec­tions, es­pe­cially with re­gard to the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. In this dis­pute, in prac­tice, it is im­pos­si­ble to es­ti­mate the votes needed to fi­nally win the pres­i­dency.

To sum up, both the close na­ture of the in­ter­nal elec­tions and the avail­able data lead us to as­sume that the phe­nom­e­non is quite atyp­i­cal in in­ter­nal elec­tions and does not jeop­ar­dize the le­git­i­macy of the re­sults of the in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Cover im­age: ADN Dig­i­tal