Tucumán and San Luis will elect new governors today on an electoral day that includes Corrientes, where only legislative roles will be voted, and Mendoza, which is holding its primaries (PASO in Spanish) to decide on provincial candidates.

These provinces are among 18 which opted to separate their electoral calendars from the national one, with the national PASO happening on August 13 and the general elections set for October 22.

Tucumán

All eyes are on Tucumán, which had its elections suspended five days before their original date by the Supreme Court. The suspension, which also applied to San Juan province, was due to a legal challenge against incumbent governor Juan Manzur’s candidacy — he was planning on running as vice governor with the current vice governor, Osvaldo Jaldo, running for governor. 

The move by the Court caused an explosive political fallout and saw a slew of similar legal requests against politicians in other provinces. Manzur later withdrew from the race, naming provincial Interior Minister Miguel Acevedo as his replacement, and the Court lifted the suspension. 

You may also be interested in: Explainer: Tucumán suspends elections amid legal controversy

The two main national coalitions —ruling coalition Frente de Todos (FdT) and opposition front Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) — are the only competitors in Tucumán. Interestingly, the province has a “coupling” system by which candidates running for executive office can add legislative candidates from other parties to their ballots: FdT Tucumán has 61 such “couplings” and JxC included 15.

Jaldo and Acevedo will be running under an FdT ticket and are running against Roberto Sánchez (of the Radical Civic Union Party (UCR)) and Mayor of San Miguel de Tucumán, Germán Alfaro — who presented the Supreme Court challenge against Manzur. They enjoy support from JxC Buenos Aires City Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.

San Luis 

San Luis will also be voting for governor and vice governor alongside local offices across the board such as 21 deputies and five senators for the provincial congress. The province uses a controversial system known as the ley de lemas — a form of open-list proportional representation where parties (lemas) can present multiple lists of candidates (sublemas) in the same election. 

Votes from across the sublemas are tallied in the final count and the lema with the highest number of total votes wins: it’s considered controversial because that could mean that a candidate could gain office despite getting fewer votes, thanks to the popularity of other sublemas.

San Luis voters can choose between four lemas and 185 sublemas today. Unión por San Luis, led by the national Justicialist Party (PJ) is joined by 20 parties affiliated with Peronism and is putting forward four gubernatorial candidates in their different sublemas. For its part the opposition, Cambia San Luis has two candidates for governor. 

Corrientes

The elections in Corrientes province are purely legislative with five provincial senator seats set to be renewed as well as 15 deputies and municipal councilors in 64 districts. The incumbent Encuentro por Corrientes (part of the JxC coalition) is facing three other political forces — FdT, Ganemos Corrientes and Libres del Sur. Ganemos Corrientes is the product of a break between Peronism and other parties allied under the FdT coalition.

Mendoza 

Finally, Mendoza will be holding its primary elections to decide who will be on the ballots for governor and vice governor in the provincial election on September 24 — there are currently 10 gubernatorial hopefuls. They will also decide on candidates for 19 provincial senate seats, 24 deputies as well as mayors and councilors in 11 districts — some districts already held their primaries on April 30.

The province is governed by Frente Cambia Mendoza (UCR and other allied parties), and their main candidate for governor is Senator Alfredo Cornejo, who held that office from 2015 to 2019. The other main political forces in the province are Frente Elegí Mendoza (led by the PJ and other political factions), and the Leftist and Workers’ Front.

This is also the first time that Mendoza is using a single paper ballot that includes all candidates across parties with checkboxes for voters to fill — they can opt for their party’s list of hopefuls or select individual candidates from different political factions.

—Herald/Télam