Surprise Series #5

october 28 was a very special day down here because it was the presidential election. polling was done on a sunday, which seemed a little curious to me, until i realized that everyone over the age of 18 is required to vote. 100% mandatory with few exceptions including extreme age (which they put at 70 or over) and some health-related reasons. i've been reading "a short history of the argentinians" by Felix Luna and recently read a portion about a pseudo-political party called the radicals. the radicals operated around the 1910s and refused to cooperate with any other party, refused to take any governmental seat offered to them, and refused to vote in every election since they believed it crooked. part of me wonders if the mandatory voting was a response to past political actions.

the political landscape is interesting here (to say the least) since there is one dominant party, the peronists, and then several others whom can't seem to grab enough of a share to really make an impact. i would think that naturally this would lead to alliances and a search for common ground amongst the parties not in power, but i've been told from a couple different people that organization in this regard is very poor and rarely happens. as a result, the peronists typically have a very easy path into the larger offices. even more strange to my democratic-republic, mostly-two-party mindset, when a peronist fails to gain entrance into an office, the party typically works to make the newly-elected person as ineffective as possible so that there is little chance he or she can make an earnest run at the position again. apparently, many of them resign in frustration.

on election day, i spent a fair share of my afternoon meandering around with Liz and a person we had met that morning at church who was passing through town on business. we found a polling station and ventured inside. immediately on our right, a wall was plastered with print-outs containing all the names of the eligible voting residents in that voting-district. this, apart from including most of their personal information, told the voter which line to go into next in a separate hallway.




i ventured back in the general direction most people were heading and found an absolute throng of people just packing the hall in seemingly everlasting lines that snaked in and out of each other. one defining feature of these lines was that they were separated by gender as male and females vote independent of one another.

unable to make my way into a room to see the ballot, my brief excursion into the poll was at its end. i found out the next morning that the peronist candidate Cristina Kirchner (and wife of the president she was succeeding) had won the election with something around a 46% majority which freed her from a later run-off.

while several pieces of the election process caused me to pause (the mandatory vote, the crazy polling station, election on a sunday), the most surprising aspect was that all the grocery stores, bars, restaurants and any other place that sold or served alcohol had to go dry for a complete 24 hours before the election. this definitely made sense, but was largely unexpected in a place where people have a drink with every meal as if that is mandated by law.