Explore "A Fish in the Water" by Mario Vargas Llosa on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On January 8, 1990, the registration of candidates for the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives was closed. And the following day marked the start of a televised publicity campaign by our candidates for the two houses that had a devastating effect on everything that I had been saying since August 1987.
The Peruvian electoral system has what is known as the preferential vote. Candidates for the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives are not elected directly; their names appear on the ballot in a list made up by their party. Votes are cast for a party's list, not for individual candidates, and votes are not split between parties; all votes are for the straight ticket. But a voter can, in addition, mark on the ballot his or her preference for two candidates on each one of the lists. The number of senators and representatives on each list who win seats is proportional to the percentage of votes won by the list as a whole. The order in which candidates qualify to enter Congress is determined by the preferential vote.