Opinion Sur Joven

Every two years, the Argentine democracy system asks its sovereigns, the people, to actively participate in the elections to legitimate democracy and its institutions.

One of the cornerstones of democracy, which was really hard to get back after many dictatorships, is citizen participation. It implies participating as voters but also as citizens that manage and coordinate voting stations and thus allow other citizens to exercise their rights. (If you want more information on the Argentine electoral system, please click here.

The last elections in Argentina showed a growing apathy trend to participate as poll workers. During the national 2007 elections, 34,000 citizens voted per minute in average. The delayed opening of voting stations due to the absence of election judges kept thousands of people waiting, and they had to vote several hours after the official end of the polling hours.

Why be election judges?

If this function didn’t exist, national elections wouldn’t be possible. There are more than 28 million voters spread all over the Argentine territory. Managing to have a ballot box in every corner of the country implies an enormous effort.

Furthermore, it is essential to avoid a biased image in the elections in order to legitimate the results. If the State did everything, there would probably be fraud accusations, because it’d be easy for governments to manipulate elections. Randomly choosing the 140,000 election judges contributes to transparency. During the polling hours -from the opening of the voting station to the ballot counting and the return of the materials-, the State steps aside and the citizens are in charge. It’s pure democracy.

Volunteers for a day

Given the low level of participation over the last elections, Argentina’s National Electoral Chamber created for the first time a record for election judge volunteers (in Spanish only). 3,700 volunteers had registered by the end of May, a distant figure from the necessary 140,000 judges. So, for now only 2.65% of the required positions have been filled, although more information from all universities is yet to be processed. According to the system, each university recruits the volunteers separately.

It is worth to mention that the volunteering system won’t replace the traditional system to recruit poll workers. Thirty days before the elections, the electoral offices of each province send thousands of telegrams to randomly chosen citizens to have them fulfill their civil duty. In case these telegrams aren’t received, the offices will be able to resort to the volunteers’ record.

Training

During the 2007 elections, the poor or even null training of the election judges and the poll workers constituted a big problem. If they don’t know what they have to do, even if they have good intentions, their efforts are in vain. And so are voting transparency and legitimacy, as well as the voters’ trust. In 2007, many election judges didn’t know what to do whenever some candidates’ ballots were missing, so they’d tell people things like “vote for a different one”.

The guidelines made by the Electoral Chamber answer this and many other questions. They have an all-new approach to these matters, and now the new guidelines even include illustrations to clarify the text (in Spanish only). Although at first sight this looks like a step forward, we may also say it’s a proof of the lack of interest the Argentine citizenship showed in 2007 to take a minute and read a text without illustrations. Besides, the material is now available not only in print, but also in Flash and PDF format.

Sources from the Electoral Chamber mentioned that a week before June 28 (the election day), State-funded channel 7 will feature an educational video to train election judges. So far, the rest of the channels haven’t agreed to collaborate. If this video was featured in a TV show with the highest ratings, almost one third of the country would know what to do. But that’s highly unlikely to happen.

There’s news regarding travel allowances as well. In the last elections, poll workers were paid 100 pesos (about 26 dollars). Now, an additional 30 pesos will be paid if the person attends a training course. Maybe this monetary tool will attract more citizens to attend the course and thus know what to do. Here you’ll find information to register in the training course (in Spanish only).

Can I be an election judge? Almost all Argentine citizens above age 18 can be election judges. Argentina’s Electoral Code says they must be registered voters, live in the voting precinct where they are serving and know how to read and write.

Controversy

As soon as the record was created, there was a lot of criticism because, at first, only students or graduates from public universities were allowed to volunteer. Electoral Chamber officials said that, despite being criticized, they were glad to see citizens were showing interest and wanted to participate. After a complaint was filed in INADI (an Argentine institution against discrimination), the possibility was immediately extended to all universities.

Why were private universities excluded? The reason was that public university students don’t have to pay for their tuition, so in this way they would be able to give something back to society, managing voting stations every two years. “We didn’t mean to exclude anyone -Electoral Chamber officers said-, but we aimed at approaching a vast universe representing the multiple cultural, political and ideological characteristics of our society”. Apart from university students, any citizen can personally go to the electoral offices and register.

A common confusion: poll watcher vs. poll worker

It is worth to mention that poll watchers aren’t the same as poll workers. Poll watchers are representatives of political parties who monitor the voting process having in mind the interests of their own parties. (If you want to learn more about political parties in Argentina, please click here.

The election judge and the deputy election judge are the top and only authorities of the voting station, which cannot be opened until they have arrived; instead, the poll watchers’ presence isn’t required to start the polling process.

We are a few days away from the elections, and no one wants to go through the same as in 2007: absence of election judges, long lines, conflicts, delays, mistakes and all sorts of accusations. Those ominous telegrams must have been sent already, and we hope all citizens carry out their duties. Because, in the end, it’s the right time to show how precious democracy is for us as a society.

Illustration by Bárbara Dana

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