Milei sends electoral reform bill, targets primaries and campaign finance

Javier Milei moved to rewrite Argentina’s electoral rules again, sending Congress a bill that would eliminate mandatory primary elections, overhaul campaign financing and bar people with criminal convictions from running for office. The package sharpened a broader fight over who gets into the political arena and who gets squeezed out before voters ever see a ballot.

The target is PASO, Argentina’s mandatory, simultaneous open primaries, created by Law 26,571 in 2009 to reduce fragmentation and open up internal party competition. Ending them would do more than cut one round of voting. It would change how parties pick candidates, how coalitions bargain, and how smaller movements force their way into national contests. For bigger blocs, it could simplify strategy. For minor parties and dissident factions, it could mean fewer chances to survive the pre-election filter.

The proposal also reached into campaign money, where new rules could alter how money is raised, tracked and spent. That matters in a country where electoral competition is shaped not only by ideology but by access to party structures, donors and legal compliance. Alongside those changes, the conviction-ban clause echoed the separate Ficha Limpia push, the anti-corruption bill that would block people with corruption convictions confirmed by two courts from running. Argentine media have said that measure could affect Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, making the issue politically combustible and certain to trigger legal and partisan backlash.

Milei’s move did not come out of nowhere. In November 2024, his government said it would send a broader reform package to Congress to eliminate PASO and modify party and financing rules. Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies also approved the single-paper ballot law on October 1, 2024, and the Ministry of the Interior said that system would be used in the 2025 national legislative elections. Together, those steps showed a government already working to redesign the machinery of voting, not just the tone of campaigning.

The political calculation is clear. Milei told Congress in March 2026 that his government would press ahead with electoral system reform, and after La Libertad Avanza gained ground in the 2025 midterm elections, he had more leverage than in his first year. He still did not have a majority, which means the bill will force negotiations with opposition blocs, especially Peronists, who have an obvious stake in whether mandatory primaries survive. The reform could read as efficiency-minded modernization, but it also looks like an effort to rewrite the electoral map in ways that favor Milei’s hand.