''Ley de Lemas'' is a form of the double simultaneous vote (DSV)

electoral system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections m ...

which is, or has been, used in elections in

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Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

, and

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

. It is an unusual variant of

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list

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

, and works as follows: *Each

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

(or coalition, if permitted) is formally termed a ''lema''. *Each ''lema'' might have several ''sublemas'' (

candidate A candidate, or nominee, is the prospective recipient of an award or honor, or a person seeking or being considered for some kind of position; for example: * to be elected to an office — in this case a candidate selection procedure occurs. * ...

s or lists of candidates). The actual composition of these ''sublemas'' can vary: it can be simply a pair of candidates (for election to the posts of governor and vice-governor, for example), or an ordered list of candidates to fill the seats in a

legislative body A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government. Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known ...

. *Each party can present several ''sublemas'' to the main

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...

. *The winning party is the one which receives the most votes after the votes won by each of its ''sublemas'' have been added together. Within this party, the winning ''sublema'' is the one which, individually, won the most votes. Once the number of votes received by each ''lema'' and ''sublema'' has been determined, seats or posts are allocated to each proportionally, typically using a system such as the

d'Hondt method The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is a method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in party-list proportional representation systems. It belongs to the class of highes ...

History and use

The ''Lemas'' system was designed in 1870 by the Belgian professor Charles Borelli.

Uruguay

''Lemas'' were introduced in Uruguay in the early 20th century when the "''Lema'' law" introduced double simultaneous voting. Nohlen, D (2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume II'', p488 It allowed for the election of the President, Chamber of Deputies and Senate by casting a single vote. Parties acted as ''lemas'', while party factions formed ''sublemas''.Nohlen, p491 Voters would vote for a ''sublema'' of a party, with the totals of ''sublemas'' totalled to establish the winning party. During periods in which a presidential system was enacted (as opposed to the collegiado system that operated between 1918 and 1933 and 1951 and 1966), the presidential candidate of the ''sublema'' in the winning party with the most votes would become president. This system was abolished for presidential elections after constitutional reforms were passed in a 1996 referendum, restricting each party to a single presidential candidate.Nohlen, p490 Department elections still use the old system. The parliamentary and department elections still use double simultaneous voting.

Honduras

applied the ''Ley de Lemas'' in the 1985 presidential election, when, due to factionalism within the two dominant parties, both were unable to elect a single presidential candidate.

Argentina

In Argentina, a number of

provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

employ or have employed a version of this electoral system. Currently, this law is in the provinces of

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, Misiones and Santa Cruz. Provinces have complete freedom to elect local and national representatives using the method of their choice; the system propagates down to the

municipal A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the ...

level (except in the hypothetical case of autonomous cities). The ''lemas'' system has never been used in Argentina for a presidential election, though the idea was circulated before the 2003 election. In the wake of Fernando de la Rúa's resignation in the wake of the 2001 riots, original plans called for a permanent successor to be elected in 2002 under the ''lemas'' system.

Support

The ''Ley de Lemas'' presents itself as a solution to the problem of

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selection of candidates performed behind closed doors by party factions. By allowing many candidates to run within the same party and leaving the decision 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 without support from powerful party figures. It also avoids

primary election Primary elections, or direct primary are a voting process by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, or a candidate in general, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election. Depending on the ...

s (which, in the case of Argentina, had never been practiced widely during the 20th century and typically enjoyed very low

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This can be the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford Univ ...

Criticism

The

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a subset of proportional representation electoral systems in which multiple candidates are elected (e.g., elections to parliament) through their position on an electoral list. They can also be u ...

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 that the voters do not really support. A party that decides to present multiple candidates, either with similar or opposing ideologies, may win even if the elected candidate had few votes compared with all the other candidates. For example, in the 1971 Uruguayan presidential election, Juan Maria Bordaberry won the presidency despite finishing over 60,000 votes behind Wilson Ferreira Aldunate. However, in that election, candidates from Bordaberry's Colorado Party won 12,000 more votes between them than the candidates from Aldunate's National Party. Also, proportional representation systems are intended for multiple winnersfor example, candidates to fill a legislative chamberbut the ''Ley de Lemas'' has been used to elect single winners (presidents, governors and mayors).

References

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