Concept in Definition ABC

In democratic systems, the election of the president of the government presents several systems or procedures. One of them is ballottage, a term that comes from the French verb batoller, which means "elected by vot" (you have to take into account that formerly the French used a ball or ball of different colors to identify the vote of each candidate). When translating ballotage into Spanish two names are used: ballotage or second round.

When, in the context of the presidential elections, none of the candidates running achieves exceed the majority of citizen votes, the two with the highest number of votes again compete for second time

This new election is the ballotage and this system was used for the first time in France in the 19th century.

In the European framework, this procedure is used in Portugal, Austria and France. In the context of Latin America ballotage began to be introduced in the 1980s in most countries (the second round applies only to the election of the president). With some frequency it is not necessary to reach the ballot, since in the first election you get enough popular support (for example, in Peru this formula was not used in the 1985, 1995 and 2000).

The purpose of this procedure is to reduce the number of political formations that intervene in an electoral process and, on the other hand, to force political parties to establish alliances. On the other hand, the second election has the purpose that the president of a nation have as much popular support as possible.

The electoral system in Argentina

The Argentine electoral system is governed by the Constitution of 1853 and the law Sáenz Peña from 1912. The election procedure changes depending on the category of the position and, in this sense, three different systems coexist. There is a majority system with a second round to elect the president and vice president of the nation.

On the other hand, there is a majority system with an incomplete list to elect national senators.

Finally, a proportional representation system is used for the election of deputies.

In this country, citizen voting is mandatory for those between 18 and 69 years old, while it is optional for those who are 16 and 17 years old or over 70 years old.

According to him regulation electoral, when the option politics obtains more than 45% of the votes or more than 40% with a difference greater than 10% with respect to the rest of the options, the presidential candidate is proclaimed the winner directly. Otherwise, it is necessary to resort to ballotage and in it the two candidates with a greater number of votes compete.

Fotolia photos: nuvolanevicata / drawlab19