Complementary municipal elections in post-electoral conflict districts in Peru

The present article analyzes the development of the Complementary Municipal Elections 2019 in twelve electoral districts in which the nullity of processes was declared after the Regional and Municipal Elections 2018 in Peru. According to the electoral judiciary in this country, the declaration of nullity of an electoral process is the responsibility of the National Jury of Elections (JNE by its Spanish acronym) and has two main causes. In the first case, eleven districts had to repeat its electoral process because of the count of null and blank votes, added or separated, exceeded 2/3 of the number of votes casted. On the other hand, only one district declared the nullity of its electoral process because of the absence of more than 50% of electors due to the non-installation of polling stations. However, beyond the legal argument about the nullity of the processes, it is necessary to consider a factor such as electoral violence that was present in all these districts. The electoral process in these electoral districts was interrupted due to the dissatisfaction of citizens with the development of the election and threats of political violence. Thus, it is possible to include this variable as an explanatory factor for the interruption of electoral processes. In this way, this research develops a qualitative analysis, based on the information compiled by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE by its Spanish acronym). This study places special emphasis on the dynamics of electoral management in districts with a high probability of suffering electoral conflicts and describes the way in which subnational elections were interrupted in these constituencies.