Recalls of the mandate of mayors in Colombia: voting and results - Other Cities - Colombia

Sousse, a town of Cundinamarca which has no more than 12,000 inhabitants, will today become the first municipality where a revocation of mandate in the current period of mayors and governors.

There are 5,205 people empowered to decide whether Ximena Ballesteros Castillo, from the Democratic Center, leaves office. For this to happen, a minimum of 1,504 people must participate in the day – 40 percent of the voters when the president was elected, according to the threshold established by law – and 753 votes are needed to revoke the mandate, which is the majority.

It will be voted after 13 months of having begun and it is the first of 121 that have been filed since January 2021 that reaches the polls. Of these, 29 have been dismissed, have not reached the required signatures or their promoters have decided to step aside, 90 are moving forward and two are ready to vote, today and Cúcuta, which still has no date and has been postponed twice.

Although the initiatives are valid within democracy, they are a wearing figure, analysts have pointed out, since they consider that this implies being in a constant campaign. In addition, some analysts have described it as ineffective and give as an example that since the figure was born in our country, only one president has been revoked.

It is so exhausting that it can take up to 13 months to process in a small town with around 12,000 inhabitants. Although it should be noted that the covid-19 pandemic it delayed the initiatives and signatures could not be collected for several months, which caused it to merge with the election year.

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complex processes

The process has several bottlenecks that can lengthen the process and even cause it to crash. The first, analysts have explained, is that obtaining 30 percent of signatures on the electoral roll to recall the president is not complex and many committees do not reach the necessary support. This happened in Cali and Manizales, where they did not have the support and the recalls sank.

Added to this are the inconveniences of certifying signatures. Once it is collected, its validity is verified, but many turn out to be invalid, either due to impersonation, because the document numbers do not match or because people who do not have their ID registered in said municipality signed. An example is the case of Medellín, where around 300,000 were collected to revoke Daniel Quintero, but more than half were declared invalid.

Additionally, if the previous procedures are passed, the certification of the resources comes. The National Electoral Council (CNE) evaluates if the ceilings were violated and that there is no irregular financing. This step, although it seems simple, is key and several have fallen for this, such as Enrique Penalosawhen he was mayor of Bogotá between 2016 and 2019, which collapsed due to possible irregularities in resources.

And at the same time as the previous steps, the leaders resort to judicial actions that are legal, but they hinder the normality of the initiative and with this they can save time, taking into account that by law they can only be carried out during the second and third mandate period.

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In fact, Quintero has filed several complaints so that the firms are reviewed again – they have already been certified three times – and has presented evidence of irregular financing. That is why today he dares to say that the recall against him “is dead”.

And if the previous steps are overcome, the greatest challenge follows, summoning 40 percent of the people who participated on election day to the polls, and this, experts say, is the most complex. “It is very difficult because it is an ordinary election and it is complex to summon a large number of citizens,” explained Yann Basset, from the Universidad del Rosario and analyst of elections and territorial dynamics of the vote.

However, he adds that it cannot be an easy process, since it has to be guaranteed that if a mayor is revoked, after a majority elected him, it is because he is not doing his job well and it is not about political interests.

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How much would they cost?

If the more than 90 revocations that are in force reach the polls, the State will have to pay around 430,000 million pesos, according to the Registry, to carry out the voting days. This is another drawback that processes could have.

According to the budget Colombia by 2022the Registry it has 2.1 billion for the elections, its operation and the two recalls ready to vote. But there is not the money to pay for the others, if they prosper.

EL TIEMPO consulted the Ministry of Finance about this situation, and they explained that, effectively, there are only the resources for those who are already approved to vote, but this does not mean that the budget cannot be taken out to develop the initiatives that are advancing. “At the time, and together with the Registry, we will review the budgetary movements that are necessary for this purpose and we will also look at the relevance or not of such resources,” they reported.

This indicates that there is no fixed budget for revocations because it is something that has not yet been defined. Elections may be called or processes may die. However, as the Registry requests the resources, that request will be reviewed and each case will be analyzed to obtain the money.

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possible lock

There are several recent antecedents in which there were differences on the financing of the sessions. One of them happened in 2017, when the Ministry of Finance refused to finance a vote for the recall of the mayor of Sogamoso, Boyacá. Finally, the Ministry transferred the resources, but this delayed the vote for 10 months.

Professor David Roll Vélez, professor at the Department of Political Science of the National University and director of the research group UN-Partidos, assured that situations such as the one mentioned above can generate mistrust among citizens in these democratic initiatives.

“While we think about what is going to be done in the recall elections, because an electoral reform must be carried out, we have to rethink whether the recall continues or not, and if it continues, how to make it continue well, so that it works better. Meanwhile, we must try to ensure that the processes that take place are not going to be truncated by gaps like this one – messes with resources – or by another series of instruments so that it is turned off from the beginning or has an obstacle that is not the will of the citizens”, commented the expert. And he ruled that “while it is there, we must find the formula so that citizens do not think it is a dead letter.”

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Basset comments that the value of these cannot be an aspect to question their legitimacy. “The cost argument cannot be a reason to delegitimize these mechanisms, they correspond to political rights that are in the Constitution,” argued the teacher. That is why he considers it necessary that in this type of process there is not a deployment of tables and positions as if it were an ordinary election. “Not everyone has to participate in a citizen participation mechanism, the Registry should invent a light deployment for that with few posts,” explained the academic.

Some analysts have pointed out that there will not be many recalls that reach the polls, since they would fall due to lack of time.

This is because carrying this out in 10 months can be complex due to the obstacles and legal actions that the leaders can put in place so that the law clarifies alleged irregularities. And the same promoters can give up, seeing that the process does not advance.

The truth is that these initiatives are stalled today and it can be complex for the Registry, bearing in mind that we are in an election year. But there is a factor that led to this damming: the pandemic. Without a pandemic, many could have been evacuated last year and today we would not be voting on the first recall campaign for the Congress and Presidencyas some have been used for electoral purposes.

MATTHEW GARCIA
Nation’s Editor
On Twitter: @teomagar
matgar@eltiempo.com

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‘Daniel is everything, except a box of surprises. He is a front ‘: Diana Osorio

On Voting Rights, Biden's Power to Act on His Own Is Limited

WASHINGTON — 

As Republicans impose new restrictions on ballot access in several states, U. S. President Joe Biden has no easy options for safeguarding voting rights, despite rising pressure from frustrated activists.

Unlike on other issues such as immigration or environmental protection, the White House has little leverage without congressional action as the November elections creep up.

“If there were some sort of easily available presidential power on this, others would have done it,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor, who researches election law. “There is no significant unilateral authority here.”

Nine months before elections that will determine control of Congress, voting rights advocates are worried there’s not enough time to fend off state laws and policies that make it harder to vote. They view the changes as a subtler form of past ballot restrictions such as literacy tests and poll taxes that were used to disenfranchise Black voters, a vital Democratic constituency.

Biden did issue an executive order last March that expanded access to voter registration and election information. The order is designed to make it easier for people in federal custody to register to vote, improve tracking of military ballots and provide better access for Americans with disabilities.

But to do more than that, Biden would have to rely on obscure and controversial constitutional provisions that probably could not take effect in time anyway, Stephanopoulos said. And the further Biden were to go to push the issue of voting rights, the more he could face criticism for overstepping his authority.

“It’s very hard for a president to weigh in,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Everything is being done at a state-by-state level.”

So while Biden may be able to take some small actions around the edges, Brinkley said, “if he tries something extraordinary, it will be tied up in the courts for years.”

Americans have grown accustomed to seeing presidents act unilaterally when they hit roadblocks in Congress. President Barack Obama resorted to a wave of executive actions branded as “we can’t wait.” He flexed his authority to increase environmental regulations and shield from deportation young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally.

There’s no equivalent legal leverage for Biden to advance voting rights policies.

Marc Morial, leader of the National Urban League, was skeptical that executive actions — which can be reversed by a future president as quickly as they were imposed by a predecessor — could be sufficient anyway.

“An executive order or an executive action is not a replacement or a substitute or even a credible alternative to legislation to protect voting rights and democracy,” he said.

But so far, legislation has not been a workable option for Democrats.

Democrats have written voting legislation that would usher in the biggest overhaul of U.S. elections in a generation by striking down hurdles to voting enacted in the name of election security. The plan would create national election standards that would trump state-level laws and restore the ability of the Justice Department to police election laws in states with a history of discrimination.

Republicans said the proposed changes were not aimed at fairness but at giving Democrats an advantage in elections. And Democrats were unsuccessful at changing Senate rules to allow the slim Democratic majority in the chamber to pass the laws on their own.

Republicans last year pushed through 33 laws creating new voting limits in 19 states, and five other states have bills that seek to restrict voting. The effort is motivated in part by a growing and widespread denial of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Republicans who have fallen in line behind Trump’s election lies are separately promoting efforts to influence future elections by installing sympathetic leaders in local election posts and by backing for elective office some of those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats and voting rights advocates are looking to the Justice Department as their best chance to ensure elections are free and fair. But there’s a political divide over what “free and fair” means in a country where millions believe false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The department has lawyers dedicated to enforcing civil voting statues, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has made it a priority.

But the department is limited in what it can do, following a 2013 Supreme Court decision that dismantled part of the civil rights-era Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of discrimination to get approval for changes to election laws.

Separately, the Justice Department also has a role in ensuring fair elections but that, too, has been complicated by politics in recent years.

There has been increasing skittishness among election administrators over the department’s role after then-Attorney General William Barr told prosecutors to investigate election fraud claims before the 2020 election was certified. Barr cited concern over potential widespread voter fraud because of an increase in mail ballots during the pandemic, but he later declared there had been no widespread fraud.

Garland’s Justice Department has sued Georgia over the state’s new election law, alleging Republican state lawmakers rushed through a sweeping overhaul with an intent to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot. The Justice Department has also brought a suit against Texas over its newly-drawn congressional districts.

But the Supreme Court this past week signaled a willingness to side with the GOP on such issues.

The high court put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power. The court’s action means the upcoming elections will be conducted under a map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled Legislature that contains one majority-Black district in a state in which more than one-quarter of the population is Black.

The three-judge lower court, which includes two judges appointed by Trump, had ruled that the state had probably violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the Supreme Court has undercut the ability of the federal government to protect voting rights, and he still believes the best chance for long-term change is to get legislation through Congress.

“The Justice Department is doing as much as they can with one hand tied behind their back,” he said. He noted the Voting Rights Act only became law after previous attempts failed.

“We don’t stop because the first attempt didn’t work.”

Iran, Venezuela and Sudan Lose UN Voting Rights With 5 More

UNITED NATIONS — 

Iran, Venezuela and Sudan are in arrears on paying dues to the United Nations’ operating budget and are among eight nations that will lose their voting rights in the 193-member General Assembly, the U.N. chief said in a letter circulated Wednesday.

Also losing voting rights are Antigua and Barbuda, Republic of Congo, Guinea, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the letter to General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid.

The suspension takes effect immediately.

The U.N. Charter states that members whose arrears equal or exceed the amount of their contributions for the preceding two full years lose their voting rights. But it also gives the General Assembly the authority to decide “that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the member,” and in that case, a country can continue to vote.

The General Assembly decided that three African countries on the list of nations in arrears — Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia — would be able to keep their voting rights.

According to the secretary-general’s letter, the minimum payments needed to restore voting rights are $18,412,438 for Iran, $39,850,761 for Venezuela and $299,044 for Sudan. The five other countries each need less than $75,000 to restore their voting rights.

Iran also lost its voting rights in January 2021. It regained those rights in June after making the minimum payment on its dues and lashed out at the United States for maintaining sanctions that have prevented it from accessing billions of dollars in foreign banks. At that time, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq thanked banking and government authorities in various places, including South Korea, for enabling the payment to be made.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran after pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six major powers in 2018.