|
Colombia The Electoral System
In order to vote, a citizen must register at the
municipal
level. In the late 1980s, voting requirements were not
strict, but
registration was still difficult and confusing, especially
for
those who had moved, as a result of complicated residency
requirements. Individuals voted at places designated by
the
municipal registrar on the basis of their identification
numbers.
Therefore, the many citizens who had moved to another
neighborhood,
town, or city had to return to their original place of
registration
in order to cast a ballot.
Presidential elections in Colombia are held by direct
popular
vote every four years in April of even-numbered years. A
plurality
is sufficient to elect a president. Congressional
elections also
take place every four years. Beginning in 1978, they have
been held
two or three months prior to the presidential ballot and
conducted
in accordance with a system of proportional
representation.
Colombian political observers commonly viewed
congressional and
local government elections as primaries for the
forthcoming
presidential vote. The candidate whose supporters won the
largest
number of seats usually became the party's presidential
nominee.
Elections for the delegates to the departmental and
municipal
assemblies are held every two years. In presidential
voting years,
they are conducted shortly after the presidential
elections. In
nonpresidential voting years, they serve as mid-term
elections
(mitacas).
An electoral committee composed of two members from
each party
supervises the municipal ballot at each polling place.
This
committee reports the results to the municipal registrar's
office,
which then forwards them to the national registrar's
office. The
vote count is also overseen by a guarantees tribunal
appointed by
the president and consisting of the minister of
government, the
minister of communications, the national civic registrar,
the
national director of criminal rehabilitation, the director
general
of the National Police, and delegates from the political
party
leadership.
High voter abstention rates have been the norm in
Colombia
since universal male suffrage was adopted in the 1930s.
This
pattern was particularly evident in elections under the
National
Front agreement. Voter participation declined from 69
percent of
those eligible to vote in the 1958 presidential elections
to 37
percent in the 1966 elections. In the crucial 1974
elections--when
both parties fielded candidates for the presidency for the
first
time in over thirty years--only 45 percent of those
eligible voted.
Despite the end of the National Front, only 20 percent of
the
voters went to the polls in the 1976 elections, when the
voting age
was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. Colombian leftist
observers argued that the 1978 abstention rate of 39
percent
clearly reflected widespread rejection of the traditional
parties,
despite the renewal of interparty competition. Scholars
also
attributed Colombia's traditionally high abstention rates
to
apathy, to noncompulsory voting, and to bureaucratic
obstacles,
such as inconvenient residency requirements.
Voter participation in presidential elections showed
relative
increases in the 1980s. About half of the electorate
participated
in the 1982 and 1986 presidential elections. Although 61
percent of
voters participated in the 1986 municipal elections, only
48
percent cast their ballots in the March 1988 local voting.
By the
mid-1980s, the highest abstention rates in urban areas
were among
the poor, who had tended not to be affiliated with either
major
party.
Data as of December 1988
|
