Buenos Aires program “My First Vote”: “Here there is no line drop,” they say

2023-06-29 20:19:37

The director of the School of Government of the Province of Buenos Aires, Marcelo Achinelli, explained the scope of the “My First Vote” program aimed at secondary level teachers in charge of citizenship subjects or spaces for youth participation. This is an initiative that aims to provide young high school students with the first experience of participating in an electoral process.

The initiative is organized by the School of Government itself, under the Ministry of Government of the province of Buenos Aires; the Provincial Directorate of Secondary Education and the Permanent Teacher Training Directorate, belonging to the General Directorate of Culture and Education.

in communication with Radio University, Achinelli highlighted: “What we decided is to train the teachers of more than 3,300 public management schools in the Province of Buenos Aires, so that later they are the ones who replicate this training in the classroom. It is totally institutional. Here there is no drop in the line, far from it, but simply to let our boys and girls know the right they have. This is an advanced right because, of the almost 200 countries recognized by the United Nations, only 20 countries have this right, one of them is Argentina. Only in 20 countries, boys and girls aged 16 or 17 can vote, they have that right. And in Latin America only five: Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina. So, this is a right of advance, a conquest that we have achieved. The idea is that this is disseminated, that boys and girls know that they have this right and how to exercise it”.

“Voting in Argentina is mandatory. What happens is that both boys of 16, 17 years of age and those over 70 do not have criminal penalties. In other words, if they are not going to vote, they are not on the register of offenders, which is why it is said that it is not mandatory. There is no sanction if they are not going to vote and they are not in the register of offenders”, developed Achinelli, in conversation with the program We have to keep going.

“The idea is to do it throughout the Province of Buenos Aires, which is divided into 25 educational regions. We decided, for an operational and place issue, that in each of these educational regions a teacher should come from each public management school. So there the principal talks with the teachers to find out which one has this profile. We were in La Matanza on Monday, at School 20, ”he concluded.