Piñera to Attend New Electoral Law Enactment Ceremony

President Sebastian Piñera will head the ceremony for the enactment of the law on Automatic and Voluntary Voting, a norm that will govern the elections on October 2012. The electoral legal initiative was approved by Congress in December and it represents an increase of nearly five million votes in the electoral register, so Chile will have 13 million voters from eight million it had.
The Chilean government gives a great significance to the electoral reform passed. In fact, Piñera compared it to the step taken in 1949, when the right to vote for women was approved, or the 1958 milestone, when a single ballot voting was established.

The fact of incorporating nearly five million voters is also equivalent to what happened in 1874, when the secret ballot was established and the income requirement to vote was eliminated, the president said.

Despite the parliamentarian support that the abovementioned act received, the opposition and even those ruling believe that in electoral matters, there should be deeper transformations, as the elimination of the binomial system and the strengthening of people’s participation.  (Taken from PL)