The National Electoral Chamber has approved a request from ruling party La Libertad Avanza (LLA) that Diego Santilli become lead candidate on their list of Buenos Aires province deputies — but refused a request for voting slips to be reprinted featuring him as the new lead candidate. 

Santilli is replacing José Luis Espert, who dropped out after he was revealed to have received money from a suspected drug trafficker. Since the ballot papers will not be reprinted, Espert’s name and face will feature on them.

The chamber accepted LLA’s appeal and revoked electoral judge Alejo Ramos Padilla’s original ruling that Karen Reichardt, who was originally in second place, should be at the top of the list. Santilli, who was originally in third place, will be followed by Reichardt.

The discussion over the order of the candidates sprouted from differing interpretations of the legislation that applies to replacing a lead candidate on an electoral list. A 2017 law requires female and male candidates to be listed alternately in order to bring more female lawmakers into Congress. The law also states that any candidate that drops out of the race should be replaced by one of the same gender, but did not explicitly say what should happen with lead candidates.

The electoral chamber rejected judge Ramos Padilla’s argument that putting Santilli first would violate the spirit of the law on participation by gender. They added that the law says that candidates of the same gender should replace those that drop out, and that Ramos Padilla “unjustifiably” deviated from that norm.

This means that while Reichardt and all the standing female candidates will remain in their original position, all male candidates will move up a spot, with Santilli first and Sebastián Pareja, who leads LLA in Buenos Aires province, third. 

Ballot reprint refused

The electoral chamber ruled on Monday afternoon that it was too late to reprint the 14 million ballots that have already been printed with Espert’s name and photo.

“The deadline to start distributing electoral material in Buenos Aires province is October 16, and the process of reprinting new ballots would take at least five days,” the chamber wrote, announcing its decision. “Thus, the deadline for it to be physically possible to carry out the requested reprint had already expired last Friday, October 10, and this appeal was not brought to the chamber until Saturday 11, with its discussion becoming possible after the electoral prosecutor had issued an opinion on Sunday 12 of the month.”

It was therefore “impossible to comply” with the reprint request, the chamber added.

On Sunday, electoral prosecutor Ramiro González recommended the chamber not to allow LLA’s request to reprint the ballots, saying it was “impossible” to carry out all the bureaucratic steps required to approve and distribute all ballots in time for the October 26 election and that the election process itself would be at risk.

LLA asked for the ballots to be reprinted, a task that would have cost the national government over AR$12 billion (roughly US$8.5 million). The interior ministry previously said there was enough money to cover it.