Peruvian Congressman Humberto Lay presented a project of law to switch Peru to voluntary vote (Peru21.pe diciembre 7, 2013). The article shows Lay’s reasoning: implementation of voluntary vote would necessarily strengthen the political parties by forcing them to work towards attraction of voters. It would increase the quality of the running candidates and free the election process of citizens who don’t have interest in exercising their democratic voting rights. The polls cited also suggest that a big part of the Peruvian population is in favor of voluntary vote.
However, this proposal instantly met opposition from both the nationalistic Partido Popular Cristiano (Peru21.pe, diciembre 10, 2013) and JNE represented by its President Francisco Távala (Peru21.pe, diciembre 25, 2013). As of now, while the exact process of elections is governed by Congress-passed laws, the statement of compulsory vote is given by the Constitution, so it would be much harder to abolish legally. Both the nationalistic Congressmen and JNE think that Peru is not ready to switch to voluntary voting, as sufficient civil responsibility doesn’t exist. They are afraid that if the voters are given the right not to vote, too many of them would do so, worsening the situation as opposed to the present day. The evidence to support this point can be found in the same LAPOP report of 2012, showing Peru having one of the highest voting turnouts in Latin America.
The nationalistic parties also say that there are much bigger problems of the country, such as poverty and education, so that if the poor part of population is removed from the voting, it is not likely to return to it voluntarily soon.
Given the patterns of these debates, we can rather safely assume that at least for the nearest general elections of 2016 the vote will be still obligatory.
