the null vote longed for by disqualified candidates was the protagonist

SAN SALVADOR – The great surprise of the elections in Guatemala, on June 25, was not only the passage to the second round of a candidate whom the polls placed him in the last places of preference. The results also showed that the null vote figure was the protagonist in these elections, surpassing the two candidates with the most votes and breaking a record not seen since 1984.

Guatemalan voters they chose Sandra Torres, former first lady of Guatemala and candidate for the National Unity of Hope (UNE), and Bernardo Arévalo de León, candidate of the Semilla Party, with a center-left profile, to compete in the second round of elections. Torres obtained 879,865 votes (15.8%) in this first round and Arévalo de León 654,276 (11.79%). But the null vote surpassed them with 965,462 (17.38%).

The reason why the null vote was historic in the Guatemalan elections is still being discussed by political scientists and electoral analysts, whose hypotheses suggest that it was a rejection of the system that during the contest disqualified the presidential candidates Thelma Cabrera, from the Movimiento for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP), Roberto Arzú, from PODEMOS, and Carlos Pineda from Prosperidad Ciudadana.

“Here the invalid vote occurs because the pro status quo system disqualifies three candidacies. In protest, they (the disqualified candidates) call for a null vote. So I think that this is the main explanation for why the null vote is historically high, ”she told the voice of america, Carlos Mendoza Álvarado, political scientist, economist and academic coordinator at the analysis platform dialogues.

The average percentage of invalid votes had been 4% in the last elections. The highest percentage on record occurred in 1984, when 15% of the Guatemalan population that went to the polls annulled their vote. It has not been until 2023, that this percentage was exceeded with 17%.

For Alvarado, the rejection of the voter can be translated in two ways: with abstentionism, that is, that the Guatemalan does not go to the polls; and with the invalid vote, that he does attend but that he mark the ballot paper with messages or other ways that rule out the vote.

In the case of Guatemala, abstentionism was not a surprise: in the 2019 first round election, 61.8% of those eligible to vote participated. In the election on June 25, in the first round, 60% participated.

“My hypothesis was that the invalid vote was not going to be as high, but that what was going to be higher was abstentionism because it does not make much sense to go vote if you are going to vote null. Unless it does have a very strong sense of expression of protest,” added Alvarado.

The invalid vote was a petition

The invalid vote was promoted by the three presidential candidates disqualified from the race for alleged administrative and legal violations.

The indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera was the first disqualified candidate to call on her constituents to vote null. In a rally, on May 10, he said that there was no longer a pairing that represented the original peoples: “The peoples with dignity are going to annul the vote for president. The white ballot will be null because we are not going to be accomplices of murderers and criminals…”.

Added to this call was Carlos Pineda, who was leading the polls with 23% of voting intentions, and in the last weeks before the election, was left out of contention after the Constitutional Court (CC) rejected the appeals that Make your legal team to continue in the competition.

“There is a way out! There is a hope! Since the judges are not with the people, since the judges are sold to corruption, there is a way out and it is a null vote. We are going to ask for it! The invalid vote is the tool we have to express our rejection of fraudulent elections,” Pineda said in a speech in front of the building of the highest court on May 26, a month before the elections.

The same path was chosen by Arzú, whose candidacy was also revoked: “Our plan to end this corrupt system is necessary and correct: to cast a null vote for the presidency. This null vote is not about supporting a candidate but about giving the corrupt a dose of their own medicine. Null vote for freedom!” Said the former candidate in a video published on their social networks on May 29.

In total, 12% of registration applications were rejected. Which is equivalent to almost double those rejected in the 2019 elections, says the preliminary statement of the European Union Electoral Observation Mission published on June 27.

“An unprecedented number of null votes in the presidential race could be indicative of the disillusionment of voters with the political offers and the distrust in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and in the judicial system for their decisions on the registration of candidates,” added the statement.

What role will the null vote have in the second round?

Of the two candidates in contention for the second round elections, Bernardo Arévalo is clear that he will go after the population that voted null. In an interview with the voice of america He assured that the invalid vote was a message of “rejection of the system.”

“There is a profound rejection by the Guatemalan population of the political system, a system that the only thing it is doing is reproducing corruption and poverty. Now we are going to say to the people who voted null, ‘we have the same rejection that you have of the political system Now we have an alternative and it’s us. Let’s join forces,'” he said.

While Torres, in a press conference on June 27, said that the result around the null vote was normal. “There is some discontent, it is normal. It is an anti-system vote. But I call on young people to make a conscious vote for the country.”

According to the Guatemala City-based Fundación Libertad y Desarrollo, for null votes to “succeed” and lead to a repeat election, they must constitute more than half of the validly cast votes.

In Guatemala there were 4.1 million valid votes, but only 956,705 invalid votes. In order for the null votes to have forced a repeat of the elections, as the disqualified candidates sought, they must have exceeded 2 million.

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