Monday, July 22, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Primary Elections in Chile
This year in November, Chile will be electing its new president for 2014 to 2018. The first primary was held last Sunday, June 30th. The candidates running are listed below:
Left:
Michelle Bachelet (incumbent*) - 73.05%
José Antonio Gomez - 5.06%
Claudio Orrego - 8.87%
Andres Velasco - 13%
Right:
Pablo Longueirra - 51.36%
Andres Allamand - 48.63%
*When I say incumbent, I mean the candidate who had previously been president and not the one that is currently president and is running again now. In Chile, one cannot run for the presidency while already serving in office as the president. Michelle Bachelet was the president the previous term before the current one. This allows the president not to have to campaign while in office, so they can spend the time they would have spent working on reelection on actual presidential duties.
Political advertisements on televisions cannot be aired at any old time that the candidate chooses; instead, each candidate has only one political ad, all of which are then aired consecutively one night during the news. And that's ALL there is for political TV ads.
All voting is held on a Sunday in public schools throughout the nation. The only voting booths that are not at a school are at the National Soccer Stadium in Santiago. Once a person has voted, they then fold their ballot up into an envelope, and then seal it with a stamp marked with the national arms. The ballots are then placed in a box on a table outside the booth. The booth has one glass side so everyone can see that the ballots are still there. Once all polling stations close, the counting begins.
Votes are counted aloud one by one by the vocales de mesa, or the voices of the tables, announcing the name selected on the ballot aloud to all the television reporters. The spectacle is taken place at practically all 13,541 voting tables, or mesas, across the nation, who broadcast the events live on the news that night. The purpose of broadcasting the counting of the ballots is to ensure democracy is taking place; by reading them aloud, it allows the people to count the votes as well, and if at the end the physical ballots don't match what the people have counted, then the counting is redone.
As another way to ensure a democratic voting process, the people who count the ballots and work the tables are randomly selected from the citizen population above 18, very similar to jury duty. If a group of people wanted to rig the counting, it would be very difficult to do so, as to be able to handle the ballots you must be work the mesa, and the probability of getting randomly selected to work the tables in great enough size to have an effect would be very unlikely.
It is also illegal to drink the day before and the day of the elections. I'm not sure why, but I would guess that that way you can't force people to become drunk and them get them to vote a certain way. But who knows.
Left:
Michelle Bachelet (incumbent*) - 73.05%
José Antonio Gomez - 5.06%
Claudio Orrego - 8.87%
Andres Velasco - 13%
Right:
Pablo Longueirra - 51.36%
Andres Allamand - 48.63%
*When I say incumbent, I mean the candidate who had previously been president and not the one that is currently president and is running again now. In Chile, one cannot run for the presidency while already serving in office as the president. Michelle Bachelet was the president the previous term before the current one. This allows the president not to have to campaign while in office, so they can spend the time they would have spent working on reelection on actual presidential duties.
Political advertisements on televisions cannot be aired at any old time that the candidate chooses; instead, each candidate has only one political ad, all of which are then aired consecutively one night during the news. And that's ALL there is for political TV ads.
All voting is held on a Sunday in public schools throughout the nation. The only voting booths that are not at a school are at the National Soccer Stadium in Santiago. Once a person has voted, they then fold their ballot up into an envelope, and then seal it with a stamp marked with the national arms. The ballots are then placed in a box on a table outside the booth. The booth has one glass side so everyone can see that the ballots are still there. Once all polling stations close, the counting begins.
Votes are counted aloud one by one by the vocales de mesa, or the voices of the tables, announcing the name selected on the ballot aloud to all the television reporters. The spectacle is taken place at practically all 13,541 voting tables, or mesas, across the nation, who broadcast the events live on the news that night. The purpose of broadcasting the counting of the ballots is to ensure democracy is taking place; by reading them aloud, it allows the people to count the votes as well, and if at the end the physical ballots don't match what the people have counted, then the counting is redone.
As another way to ensure a democratic voting process, the people who count the ballots and work the tables are randomly selected from the citizen population above 18, very similar to jury duty. If a group of people wanted to rig the counting, it would be very difficult to do so, as to be able to handle the ballots you must be work the mesa, and the probability of getting randomly selected to work the tables in great enough size to have an effect would be very unlikely.
It is also illegal to drink the day before and the day of the elections. I'm not sure why, but I would guess that that way you can't force people to become drunk and them get them to vote a certain way. But who knows.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
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