Electoral system, among those with the highest budget in AL

Mexico ranks second in Latin America, after Costa Rica, with the highest per capita budget allocated to the electoral system, both with respect to its total population and if only the electoral roll is considered, and either in years with or without a presidential election, reveals a comparative analysis of the Belisario Domínguez Institute of the Senate.

In 2018, the year in which President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected and at real prices for 2022, the electoral spending assigned by each voter totaled 386.7 pesos; taking into account all Mexicans, each one represented an expense in electoral matters of 273.1 pesos.

The “Comparative analysis of the budget assigned to electoral systems in Latin American countries”, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico and Peru, specifies that “the local currency of each country analyzed” was converted “to Mexican pesos , based on the adjustment to constant prices of 2022 with the Consumer Price Index of each country and the corresponding exchange rate with respect to the Mexican currency”.

As well as that, “to make the figures more comparable between countries of different population sizes, the budgets” were analyzed “in per capita terms with respect to the total population” and also “only considering the most recent electoral roll available for each country in each year” revised.

Analysis

The selected years with presidential election, in the case of Mexico it was 2018; Peru and Chile, 2021, when the presidents José Pedro Castillo Terrones and Gabriel Boric Font were elected, respectively; 2022, when the presidents Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego, Rodrigo Chaves Robles and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were elected, respectively, in Colombia, Costa Rica and Brazil, and 2023, the year in which Argentina will hold its next presidential elections.

Based on the budget data of each country, the report refers, considering the total population “Costa Rica is the country in the sample analyzed in Latin America that allocated the largest public budget per capita to finance its electoral system in the year with the recent presidential election ( 364.5 constant Mexican pesos of 2022), while Argentina is the country with the lowest public budget per capita in said area (79.4 pesos).

“Mexico ranks after Costa Rica in terms of the per capita public budget allocated to financing the electoral system in a year with a presidential election (273.1 pesos…)”.

If only the electoral roll is considered, Costa Rica was also at the head of the sample as the country that allocated the largest public budget per capita to finance its electoral system in the year with the recent presidential election (538.5 pesos), while Argentina was placed as the one that will allocate the lowest public budget per capita in said area (107.3 pesos).

In the year with the recent presidential election and taking into account each Colombian, Brazilian, Peruvian and Chilean, 218.2, 179.8, 169.3 and 149.9 pesos were allocated to electoral spending individually, respectively.

Considering only the electoral roll and to elect a president, the amount of total spending per voter, respectively, in Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Chile amounted to 291.1, 249.7, 232.3 and 191.6 pesos.

rolando.ramos@eleconomista.mx