Electoral authorities in Argentina say midterm results must be released by district

Argentina’s National Electoral Appeals Court (CNE in its Spanish acronym) has ruled unanimously that the results of the October 26 midterm elections be released by district, rejecting the national government’s bid to lump them together in a national count.

President Javier Milei’s government had sought to have them published in a national count, a move that could have produced a better narrative for the government, which is fielding candidates in all provinces under the same banner, unlike its opposition rivals.

The ruling, issued by Judges Alberto Dalla Vía, Daniel Bejas and Santiago Corcuera, said that the “the publication of the provisional count should respect the criterion of division by electoral district."

The court’s seven-page ruling indicates that “as the result of the express letter of the National Constitution and the applicable electoral legislation, there is no margin of interpretation permitting a global account across the national territory, as provided for presidential elections.”

"The results for each category are necessarily computed for each one of the electoral districts into which the national territory is divided and that is how the provisional results should thus be published by the National Electoral Board," continues the resolution.

The court’s ruling came at the request of different opposition parties: the Partido Justicialista (Peronists), the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), the Frente de Izquierda y Trabajadores Unidad Distrito CABA (both leftist). 

The government was seeking to display a favourable result by counting votes nationwide and not by district.

In reply to the Casa Rosada’s intention, the trustees of the political parties forming the FP formalised last Monday their demand to the CNE that the Ministry’s National Electoral Board (DINE, in its Spanish acronym) inform the count from the elections only by district.

The document, signed by Eduardo López Wesselhoefft, Patricia García Blanco, Eduardo Cergnul and Agustina Vila, explained that “the next election is national by district and not in a single district.”

“The aim of the main opposition to La Libertad Avanza (LLA) is that the DINE informs the vote-counting by province because announcing the nationwide results lack legal foundation,” said the text, adding that doing it that way “could lead to the electoral process being misread.”

They required that the result should be “informed, district by district, without accumulation” since the proposed methodology exceeds the responsibilities of the DINE “whose function should be limited to counting and making public the official results of the election.”

“On the contrary, they would be distorting the information and altering the interpretation, by third parties, of the provisional result,” they added.

Finally, they underlined that this is not a “national election in a single district” and for that reason “cannot be removed from its area of competence” to “meddle” in the counting or in the political readings “for which they should stay on the side-lines.”