The bench of People’s Renewalat the initiative of legislator Jorge Zeballos Aponte, presented two bills that propose to increase from 2 to 6 the number of congressmen from the electoral district of Peruvians abroad, as well as enabling them the possibility of postal voting.
The first legislative initiative, the 1662/2021-CRproposes to modify article 21 of Law No. 26859, Organic Law of Elections and raise the number of seats currently held by said constituency to six.
Under the proposal, the six seats will be divided into: 2 representatives from the United States and Canada; 2 for Europe, Asia and Africa; and 2 by Latin American countries.
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The statement of reasons indicates that Peruvians abroad only have two seats for more than 3,200,000 citizens and almost one million voters, which in practice means that the principle of proportionality would be violated.
Likewise, it is specified that the measure does not imply increasing the number of parliamentarians, since Lima has 1 parliamentarian for every 222 thousand voters, while Peruvians abroad have 1 parliamentarian for almost 500 thousand voters.
Meanwhile, the other bill, the 1663/2021-CRproposes to modify articles 224°, 225°, 233°, 2380 and 239° of the Organic Law of Elections, so that Peruvians abroad “Exceptionally, they can make use of the early postal vote”.
This modality consists of the emission of the vote by the citizen in a card that he previously requests and, after exercising his right, returns, by the via post or mailto the consulate in which it is registered, within the terms established in the corresponding regulations.
According to the initiative, the postal vote is only applicable in general election and referendum. The process would consist of 4 stages and culminates when the electoral envelopes are delivered to the person consulted on duty or whoever takes their place within three days before the day of the electoral process.
