The Electoral Justice with jurisdiction over the province of Buenos Aires reported that Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza delivered fewer ballots than those necessary for the runoff. After verifying this, Justice recommends that LLA «redouble its efforts regarding the provision and replacement of ballots that its prosecutors must carry out.»
The Electoral Board, as it is formally called, is made up of the president of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court, Sergio Torres, the federal judge of La Plata with electoral jurisdiction Alejo Ramos Padilla and the president of the Federal Chamber of La Plata Roberto Lemos Arias.
The document signed by the three judges is known right in the middle of announcements of future fraud and eventual theft of ballots by Milei. At no time did either Milei or his representatives substantiate the reason for his warning.
The Board recalls in the text that it followed the rules of the National Electoral Code and «provided that it would receive, from the groups that will participate in the presidential election in the second round on November 19, for distribution through the Argentine mail to each of the voting locations that will operate», the following elements:
*A bundle of up to 350 ballots for each of the 38,074 tables in the Province.
*Two bundles of the same number of ballots «for the ‘contingency’ system provided for in the standard for each establishment in which up to eight voting stations will operate and four bundles in the case of the establishments in which they will operate nine or more voting stations.
The judges established that La Libertad Avanza «has presented its bundles with a substantially smaller number of ballots that, in some cases, does not reach a quarter of the maximum amount suggested, also noting in many cases that the number of bundles does not even cover «all the tables from the municipalities that are being processed for delivery to the Post Office, which forced bundles to be removed from the contingency bags, or even subtracted from other municipalities for subsequent processing, in order to complete the tables.»
Furthermore, «the non-compliance with what is required regarding the way of presentation of the bundles has been noted, since the group has presented them in closed cardboard boxes or in black plastic bags, which makes their control and verification difficult and delays.»
The judges claim to have communicated these findings to LLA’s representatives.
There were no problems with the deliveries from Unión por la Patria.
The Electoral Board clarifies that political forces have no obligation to deliver ballots. «It is a collaboration provided by the Electoral Justice,» she says. «The provision and replacement of ballots at the tables is the responsibility of the groups through their prosecutors.» This action arises from the application of the funds allocated by the national State. There are 258,379,302 pesos for each participating alliance.
But, «that said, it is also the duty of this Board to warn that a delivery of ballots as deficient as the one observed so far by La Libertad Avanza does not conform to the forecasts estimated by this court for the best development of the day.» «competitive».
The judges report that the ballots are already loaded into the Correo Argentino vehicles for distribution.
It also recommends increasing the number of ballots for the districts with the most voters: Third Section (which includes La Matanza and Lomas de Zamora), First Section (among other parties, San Isidro and Merlo) and Capital (La Plata is the second district of the Province after La Matanza).
Ghost
In a recent interview, recorded before the Peruvian entertainer Jaime Bayly, Javier Milei stated that the elections of October 22 were not fair, although he did not make any judicial presentation in this regard. “There were irregularities of such magnitude that we can say it was fraud,” he said on that occasion.
On the 22nd, the justice system was forced to rule on what legal channels are to report irregularities, given the libertarian attempt to set up a website to report alleged fraud anonymously.
Simultaneously, in recent days, a few supporters of the self-perceived lion, a hundred or two, gathered at the obelisk to protest against the alleged fraud. The specter of “preventive fraud” is one of the classics of the new right, wielded both by the Bolivian opposition in 2019 and by Trump in the US in 2020, as well as by Bolsonaro in Brazil last year. That way, if they win, they “beat the fraud” and, if they lose, they delegitimize the triumph of their opponents and their future government.