Fraud claims inject uncertainty into Argentina's presidential runoff
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA >> This may sound familiar: A self-styled outsider aims to win the presidency and purge the political establishment so he can restore order to a broken nation — if only he can overcome a system rigged against him.
But this isn't former President Donald Trump, or even happening in the U.S. It's Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei, the latest politician to follow Trump's playbook and claim that election results are dubious and that gatekeepers may deprive him of the nation's top job.
Analysts say it is a tactic to fire up Milei's base and promote vigilance at polling stations, or set the stage for refusing to concede a loss.
The right-wing economist rose to fame blasting the political class on television and has welcomed comparisons to Trump. His message that a corrupt elite has left the country behind resonates with Argentines coping with rising poverty and 142% annual inflation.
Milei represents upheaval, and casting doubt on the electoral system — in a nation where it is widely trusted — is true to form. Since Argentina's return to democracy a halfcentury ago, no candidate in any national race has formally challenged results, according to the electoral appeals court.
Pre-election polls in the Nov. 19 runoff between Milei and Economy Minister Sergio Massa show a dead heat.
Before the first round, most had shown Milei narrowly ahead, yet Massa won handily, by 7 percentage points. Claims of fraud exploded on social media, and some Milei supporters volunteered to monitor the vote at the country's more than 100,000 polling stations.
Luis Paulero, 30, is one of them. He cared little for politics and, although voting is mandatory, had never before cast a ballot. But Milei “sparked passion in me,” Paulero said at a small rally in Ezeiza, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Argentina's capital.
He says he is disgusted that the governing party might steal the presidency. “I've been watching it on TikTok videos; all the fraud that was done seems wrong, it's undemocratic,” said Paulero, a delivery app driver.
At least partly, Milei is stoking fraud claims himself. In an interview Nov. 7, he said the first-round vote wasn't clean.
“There were irregularities of such proportion that they put the result in doubt,” Milei said. He continued: “Whoever counts the vote controls everything.”
Earlier, Milei had said that were it not for fraud during the August primaries, he would have snagged 35% of the vote instead of 30%.
He has provided no evidence in either instance. Still, die-hard boosters have brought signs reading “Don't Screw With My Vote!” and “One Stolen Vote is Fraud!” to small rallies.
Elections in Argentina have always had some irregularities, but not enough to alter results, said Gala Díaz Langou, executive director of Center for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth, a Buenos Aires-based think tank.
Many allegations on social media have noted that nearly 1,700 polling stations recorded zero votes for Milei in preliminary results of the first round — “statistically impossible,” Milei and his supporters said.
But an analysis by Argentine fact-checking agency Chequeado showed that nearly all those stations had no votes for any candidate, indicating their results hadn't been uploaded. The number of stations where one candidate received zero votes but others had votes were comparable for Milei and Massa.
The voting process in Argentina is decidedly antiquated. Polling stations have paper ballots for each party and voters pick the one they want, put it in an envelope that they place into a cardboard ballot box.
It is easy for voters to steal ballots or rip them up because they go into a room alone where the ballots are located. Voting monitors make sure they are replaced, and oversee the vote count. Recruiting enough of them is a challenge for Milei's fledgling Liberty Advances party.
While questioning the shortcomings of Argentina's voting system shouldn't be taboo, Milei sowing doubt about it is a political strategy, said Brian Winter, a longtime Argentina expert and vice president of the New Yorkbased Council of the Americas.