The PASO elections must be repealed

The Open, Simultaneous, and Mandatory Primaries -PASO- began in 2009, when Cristina Kirchner conceived law 26.571, grandiosely justified as a "Democratization of Political Representation, Transparency, and Electoral Equity." Fifteen years later, reality has shown that it did not democratize, make transparent, or achieve equity in anything. The system was applied for the first time in 2011 and then in 2015, 2019, and 2023.

It apparently proposed that instead of top-level agreements, it would be the citizens who defined the candidates of each party. Whether affiliated or not, everyone could vote regardless of their affiliation, simultaneously on the same day, but it would be mandatory for voters and for the parties.

In reality, the PASO are a preliminary election to the definitive one, forcing more than 35 million people to vote, deploying security forces, vehicles, postal systems, school buildings, and polling authorities. Millions of ballots are printed and distributed, and thousands of ballot boxes that become trash within a few days. An overwhelming logistics operation must cover the entire territory of the 8th largest country in the world.

Billions of pesos paid by the same people who lack sufficient security, health, and other essential services but vote in the PASO every 4 years, only to have to repeat the entire process to vote for candidates 60 days later.

People are forced to vote and pay twice for something that only requires one election.

The cost of this duplication is enormous: in 2023, total electoral spending was among the highest since 2009. It is the work of the people, turned into their money, confiscated via taxes, just so that the political class saves the money that they should put out of their own pockets for those who really benefit from the PASO.

Time has shown that the promise to “democratize” the selection of candidates was pure hypocrisy, because the vast majority of parties presented single lists in all the PASO.

And there is something more serious: the PASO are a mandatory survey paid for by us, with negative externalities in the economic, financial, and political realms, which alters the election that really matters, and makes us lose money twice: by paying for it and by suffering the consequences of the instability they provoke.

The most evident and extreme case was in 2019, because the almost 16 points that Alberto Fernández led over Macri triggered a currency run, abrupt devaluation, and inflationary spike that impoverished millions of Argentines. This electoral system, instead of consolidating democracy, weakened it and caused an economic crisis. It was not accidental, but structural.

On the other hand, none of the parties that defend the existence of the PASO explain the basics: why should people pay for the internal affairs of political parties? A party is, in political, legal, and economic terms, a voluntary association of citizens, whose internal disputes, organization, and candidates are private matters of its members.

If they want to vote for those who represent them, they must pay the cost just as each of us pays for our preferences in our own personal and social life. Freedom does not offer another option: people, even if we call it “the State,” should not have to pay for the internal affairs of Peronism, Radicalism, PRO, LLA, or anyone else.

It is the antithesis of democratization: it is the complete subjugation of all to the decisions of a very few, to the small group of party leaders who decide these measures and dress them in laws, decrees, and rulings that were conceived to guarantee our freedom, not the caste privileges of politicians.

It is understandable to impose the obligation of elective voting to prevent the party discipline of ultra groups from prevailing over the laxity and apathy of those who see politics as something foreign, because they dedicate themselves to working on their own.

But making consultative voting mandatory and making people pay that enormous cost is not democratization: it is state coercion.

The PASO also generate a federal problem: provinces must subordinate their political calendars to a decision made by the National Executive Power, given the simultaneity that governs the system.

Since taking office, President Milei has attempted to end the PASO three times: with the Bases Law, in the Extraordinary Sessions of 2024, and in February 2025. He only managed to suspend them, because his parliamentary representation was not enough to overcome the inertia of the old politics, accustomed to loading citizens with all kinds of expenses, always with the worn-out argument of a 19th-century style democracy.

In 2026, the government proposes a broad electoral reform that includes the repeal of this illegitimate exaction, replacing the PASO with endorsements from affiliates: 0.1% of the national registry for presidents and 0.5% of the provincial registry for senators and deputies.

Thus, it will be civil society and not the State that supports candidates without the economic cost being borne by the people and left to those who claim to have genuine support.

Milei promised an electoral reform and people voted for him in 2023 and 2025, so that change in the political system has full democratic legitimacy. Those who oppose it will make their disdain for the will of the people they invoke every time they speak evident, but whose interests they rarely truly take into account.

The PASO were one of the various instruments of Kirchner to benefit himself, and therefore, the 15 years of PASO show only a huge waste of people's money, violated freedoms, and weakening of the economy due to the inherent instability of every election.

The suspension of 2025 was the first official recognition that the system did not work. The definitive repeal is the step that should be taken now.

The State, that is, the people should not continue financing the structures of political parties. Argentines must regain the freedom for our money to be for us, not for the internal competitions of politicians.

The open and simultaneous primaries funded by the State are a rarity. In countries like the U.S., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom, each party chooses its candidates through its own mechanisms (congresses, delegates, affiliates) or holds primaries that are organized and financed internally, without obligation for citizens to participate. Uruguay is the only comparable case: it has mandatory open and simultaneous primaries for parties, but citizen voting is voluntary, which is reflected in low participation.

Let us be free, for the PASO do not matter at all, San Martín would tell us.