Secret Ballots

Argentina was all excited last week over an election that seemed to be in the bag. Populous, rich Buenos Aires Province (which surrounds, but does not include, the capital city) voted for a Governor, for provincial senators and legislators. As an added prize, to the winning party would go the largest single block of electoral votes for the 1943 Presidential election.

It seemed a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives, under the leadership of local Boss Alberto Barcelo, would win. They were not so strong as the Radicals numerically, but the election laws were on their side. The laws permitted them, as the winning party in the last election, to appoint all poll officials and to run the election machinery pretty much as they wished.

The previous weekend, as a kind of warmup, there had been a turbulent election in San Juan Province, where two men had been killed and 84 ballot boxes destroyed. With charges and countercharges of fraud, no results, have yet been published.

In Buenos Aires the excitement started even before election day. At the suggestion of a Radical leader, police searched several printing plants, found a million faked ballots for Radical and Socialist candidates. These, the Radicals charged, were to be used to make Conservative ballot-box stuffing look plausible. The Conservatives said the ballots meant just what they seemed to mean.

The Government of Conservative President Ramon S. Castillo impartially banned meetings of the pro-British Accion Argentina, the left-wing Forja and nationalist groups. Police fueled planes to rush reinforcements wherever needed.

The police had plenty to do. There were scores of fights, several shootings. One man was killed, twelve others wounded. As expected, Radicals promptly charged widespread fraud, talked darkly of "taking to the streets" if they did not win.

According to a standard Argentine wisecrack the Argentine ballot is so secret that even the voter does not know for whom he is voting. But Buenos Aires voters, whatever their sympathies, had no doubt that when the returns came in the Conservatives would have won.

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