The allegations of electoral fraud made by Donald Trump had already inspired a South American leader, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, to sow doubts about the security of his nation’s elections, which sparked riots in Brazil’s capital earlier this year.
Now, 2,400 kilometers to the south, there is a new Latin American politician who is denouncing electoral fraud with little evidence, undermining the faith of many of his supporters in this Sunday’s elections in his country.
Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian economist and television personality, is competing in a runoff election to become the next president of Argentina. During the campaign, he has welcomed comparisons to Trump and Bolsonaro and, like them, has repeatedly warned that if he loses, it could be because the elections were stolen from him.
Milei has claimed, without evidence, that stolen and damaged ballots cost him over a million votes in the primary elections held in August, which is up to 5 percent of the total.
Milei stated that a similar fraud could have also rigged the first round of the general elections on October 22, in which he finished second with 30 percent of the votes. “There were irregularities of such magnitude that cast doubt on the result,” he said in a television interview last week.
On Wednesday, his campaign intensified the accusations. Milei’s sister, who runs his campaign, filed a complaint with a federal judge alleging “colossal fraud” and claiming that anonymous Argentine officials had changed Milei’s ballots in favor of his opponent in the previous elections. They said the information came from anonymous sources.
Milei’s rise from inflammatory television commentator to political leader on the verge of Argentina’s presidency has already shaken the politics of this country of 46 million people. His radical promises to replace the Argentine currency with the US dollar and close the country’s central bank have made Argentines prepare for what could happen if he wins.
But now, with his preemptive allegations of fraud, Argentines are also preparing for what could happen if he doesn’t win.
Polls indicate a technical tie between Milei and his opponent, Sergio Massa, a center-left Minister of Economy.
Many of Milei’s supporters have already started to complain, blaming fraud for his second-place finish last month and taking to the streets at least three times to protest what they believe are plans by the left to steal the elections. On Thursday, his supporters announced plans to protest at the country’s electoral authority on election day.
So far, the protests have been relatively small and peaceful, but election observers point out that it could be because Milei is still in the race.
“I’m not worried that the Argentine electoral system is at risk,” said Facundo Cruz, an Argentine political scientist who has closely followed the fraud allegations. “But I am worried that certain practices we saw in the United States and Brazil could be repeated.”
Argentina’s predicament suggests that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 US elections not only left a lasting mark on American democracy but also continue to reverberate far beyond US borders, where some political leaders are turning to fraud as a potential new excuse for electoral defeat.
“In 40 years of democracy, we have never had serious criticism or any idea of fraud like the one being reported now,” said Beatriz Busaniche, director of Fundación Vía Libre, an Argentine non-profit organization that has worked to improve the country’s voting systems. (Argentina was under military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983).
“All the people who believe in the electoral system, democracy, and transparency are very concerned,” Busaniche added.
Argentine electoral authorities claim there is no evidence of fraud. In the October 22 vote, they received a total of 105 reports of lost or damaged ballots, a usual number.
Electoral authorities also stated that they have not received any formal complaints from Milei’s campaign regarding possible fraud. The Argentine electoral authority, in a statement, described his statements as “baseless fraud invocations that are misleading the public and undermining democracy as a system of shared beliefs.”
In Argentina, citizens vote by placing a ballot for their preferred candidate in an envelope and depositing the sealed envelope in a ballot box. Campaigns distribute their ballots at polling stations. Milei and his allies claim that some people have been stealing their ballots from polling stations, preventing their supporters from voting for him.
However, when pressed, Milei and his campaign have not presented much evidence. After the Argentine electoral prosecutor requested evidence from Milei’s campaign, they stated that they had responded with videos and photos from social media.
The man coordinating Milei’s response to electoral officials, Santiago Viola, the campaign’s national legal director, said in an interview that he had received between 10 and 15 written complaints from people claiming that Milei’s ballots were missing from their polling stations.
Viola said he believed campaign officials from other parts of the country had collected other complaints, but he had not seen them. He could not verify another campaign official’s claim last month that there were 4,500 reports of missing ballots. Last month, over 26 million people voted.
“Javier handles numbers better than I do,” Viola said, referring to Milei.
Milei claims that there are “studies” that prove that 5 percent of his votes were stolen in the primary elections, but he has not shared them.
Milei has said that an indication of fraud is that some polling stations did not report any votes in his favor. Milei claims that is statistically impossible. In reality, the top three candidates last month received zero votes in almost the same number of polling stations—approximately 100 each—excluding the stations that did not register any votes. There are 104,520 polling stations.
“I did not come out to denounce fraud,” said Massa, Milei’s opponent. “There may be tables or ballot boxes where no one votes for you.”
Massa said Milei is following a well-known playbook. “It’s the same methodology as Bolsonaro, the same methodology as Trump,” he said.
Milei has shown a propensity for conspiracy theories. He has called climate change a socialist plot. He has expressed doubts about the results of the 2020 and 2022 elections in the United States and Brazil. He has also claimed that subsequent attacks by protesters on government buildings in the US and Brazil had nothing to do with Trump or Bolsonaro.
As a presidential candidate, Milei has much less power than Trump and Bolsonaro had as sitting presidents when they denounced fraud. However, in both the United States and Brazil, the government institutions that they controlled largely resisted the accusations of fraud.
Instead, it was their supporters—who had heard months of allegations of electoral fraud—who stormed the halls of power.
Upon learning the results of the first round last month, 21-year-old construction worker Julián Ballester stood outside Milei’s campaign headquarters on election night, convinced that the numbers were rigged. “They threw away a lot of ballots,” he said, claiming he had seen photos in WhatsApp groups. “The fraud is evident.”
The situation in Argentina has become more tense in the past year as the economy has crumbled. Annual inflation exceeds 140 percent, while poverty and hunger have increased. Milei has built his campaign in part on the claim that a hidden sect of the elite, led by Massa, is robbing everyday Argentines.
Last year, a man driven by conspiracy theories pulled the trigger of a gun inches away from the face of Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Massa’s political ally.
The gun malfunctioned and did not fire.
Milei said this week that his campaign plans to…