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The Ley de Lemas (Spanish, Law of Lemmas) is a law dictating a voting system that employs an unusual open-list party-list proportional representation method. It is, or has been, used in Argentina, Uruguay and Honduras. Announcement of elections in Brunate (near Como), Italy A voting system is a process that allows a group of individuals to choose between a number of options, and determines the preferred or winning option based on the number of votes each option receives. ...
Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems used in multiple-winner elections (e. ...
The mechanism is as follows:
- Each political party (or coalition, if permitted) is formally termed a lema.
- Each lema might have several sublemas (candidates or lists of candidates).
- There are no primary elections. Each party can present several sublemas directly to the main election.
- The winning party is the one which got most votes (adding up the votes of its sublemas). Within this party, the winning sublema is the one which got most votes.
The actual composition of the sublemas can vary: it can be a pair of candidates (for example, to be elected governor and vice-governor), or an ordered list of candidates to fill a legislative body. Once determined the votes for each lema and sublema, the count is done using a common method (for example, d'Hondt). A political party is an organization that seeks to attain political power within a government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns. ...
The contents of this page have been moved to http://en. ...
The examples and perspective in this article do not represent a worldwide view. ...
An election is a decision making process whereby people vote for preferred political candidates or parties to act as representatives in government. ...
A legislature is a governmental deliberative assembly with the power to adopt laws. ...
The DHondt method is a highest averages method for allocating seats in party-list proportional representation. ...
History and use
The Lemas system was designed in 1870 by the Belgian professor Charles Borelli. The first legislative project supporting it was presented in Uruguay in 1875, but the system was adopted progressively by several modifications and innovations to the electoral law in 1910, 1934, 1935 and 1939. Uruguay still employs it, though the constitutional reform of 1996 has limited its scope. 1870 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...
1875 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...
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1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...
1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...
1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...
1996 (MCMXCVI) is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...
Honduras has applied the Ley de Lemas in presidential elections.
In Argentina, a number of provinces employ or have employed a version of this electoral system: Chubut, Formosa, Jujuy, La Rioja, Misiones, Río Negro, Salta, San Luis, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero, and Tucumán. Provinces have complete freedom to elect local and national representatives using the method of their choice; the system propagates down to the municipal level (except in the hypothetical case of autonomous cities). Argentina consists of 23 provinces (provincias, singular - provincia), and 1 federal district (Capital Federal *). Capital Federal * Buenos Aires Catamarca Chaco Chubut Córdoba Corrientes Entre Ríos Formosa Jujuy La Pampa La Rioja Mendoza Misiones Neuquén Río Negro Salta San Juan San Luis Santa Cruz Santa Fe Santiago...
Chubut is a province in the southern part of Argentina, that lies between the 42nd Parallel South (forming the border with the RÃo Negro Province) and 46th Parallel South (bordering Santa Cruz Province), the Andes range separating Argentina from Chile, and the Atlantic ocean. ...
Map of Argentina highlighting Formosa province Formosa Province is in northeastern Argentina, part of the Chaco Region. ...
Jujuy is a province of Argentina, located in the extreme northwest of the country, at the borders with Chile and Bolivia. ...
La Rioja is a one of the provinces of Argentina and is, located in the west of the country. ...
Misiones is one of the 23 provinces of Argentina, located in the northeastern corner of the country in the Mesopotamia region. ...
RÃo Negro is a province of Argentina, located at the northern edge of Patagonia. ...
Salta is a province of Argentina, located in the northwest of the country. ...
Categories: Argentina geography stubs | Argentine provinces ...
Santa Cruz is a province of Argentina, located in the south of the country, in the Patagonia. ...
Santa Fe is a province of Argentina, located in the north of the country. ...
Santiago del Estero is a province of Argentina, located in the north of the country. ...
Tucumán is a province of Argentina, located in the northwest of the country. ...
A municipality or general-purpose district (compare with: special-purpose district) is an administrative local area generally composed of a clearly defined territory and commonly referring to a city, town, or village government. ...
An autonomous (subnational) entity is a subnational entity that has a certain amount of autonomy. ...
The lemas system has never been used in Argentina for a presidential election, though the idea was circulated before the 2003 election. Argentina held a presidential election on Sunday, April 27, 2003. ...
Justification and criticism The Ley de Lemas presents itself as a solution to the problem of fiat selection of candidates performed behind closed doors by party factions. By allowing many candidates to run within the same party and leaving the decission to the citizenry, the system is supposed to end the practice of dark intra-party alliances and add transparency to the conflicts between internal factions. This helps the participation of independent candidates (not backed up by powerful party leaders). It also avoids primary elections (which, in the case of Argentina, have never been practiced widely and typically enjoy very low voter turnout). The examples and perspective in this article do not represent a worldwide view. ...
Voters lining up outside a Baghdad polling station during the 2005 Iraqi election. ...
However, the system is not without criticism. The party-list proportional representation system works under the assumption that the citizens vote primarily for parties. However, citizens often place emphasis on individual candidates rather than the parties' perceived ideological platforms (this is especially true of Argentina). The diversity of views allowed within a single party means that voters may end up indirectly giving their vote to a candidate they do not really support. Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems used in multiple-winner elections (e. ...
Also, proportional representation system are (obviously) intended for multiple winners (for example, candidates to fill a legislative chamber); yet the Ley de Lemas has been used to elect governors and mayors. A mayor (from the Latin maīor, meaning larger,greater) is the politician who serves as chief executive official of some types of municipalities. ...
Problems with the law in Argentina
In Santa Fe In the province of Santa Fe, where the Ley de Lemas was in force since 1991, it produced two instances of governor elections lost by candidates who had obtained considerably more votes than their immediate rival. In the 2003 elections, the Socialist candidate Hermes Binner (former mayor of Rosario) got 556,603 votes, while the Peronist candidate Jorge Obeid (former governor and mayor of Santa Fe City), got 319,887 votes. Obeid, however, won the election thanks to the cumulative votes of the other Peronist sublemas. Santa Fe is a province of Argentina, located in the north of the country. ...
1991 (MCMXCI) is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Socialist Party of Argentina is a political party operating in Argentina. ...
Hermes Juan Binner is an Argentine medical doctor and politician, born on 5 June 1943 in Rafaela, province of Santa Fe. ...
Rosario is the largest city of the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, and the third most populous in the country, after Córdoba and Buenos Aires. ...
Justicialist Party Coat of Arms The Justicialist Party (Spanish: Partido Justicialista, PJ) is a Peronist political party from Argentina. ...
Santa Fe is the capital city of the Santa Fe Province of Argentina. ...
The proliferation of (mostly opportunistic) sub-lists for legislative posts reached outlandish levels, to the point that 1 voter in 51 was a candidate to some post in some sublema (about 40,000 candidates total).
The law was repealed on 30 November 2004, and replaced by compulsory primary elections followed by a closed-list main election, with proportional representation for legislative elections and first-past-the-post for the executive charges. November 30 is the 334th day (335th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 31 days remaining, as the final day of November. ...
2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The examples and perspective in this article do not represent a worldwide view. ...
The plurality electoral system (or first past the post electoral system), is a voting system for single-member districts. ...
In Tucumán The Ley de Lemas makes it easy to postulate a myriad of candidates, even if they have little representativity, and in fact encourages political parties to do so. In the province of Tucumán, the 2003 election saw a total of 1,800 sublemas (for provincial and municipal executive and legislative posts). More than 50,000 citizens were candidates (1 in 23 eligible voters). As in Santa Fe, this confused the voters and diluted the legitimacy of the candidates, as well as making the vote count a extremely complicated process. Tucumán is a province of Argentina, located in the northwest of the country. ...
There exist various methods through which the ballots cast at an election may be counted, prior to applying a voting system to obtain one or more winners. ...
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