Spoiled Opportunities And Blank Stares: A Comparative Study Of Invalid Voting As Protest Behaviour

To improve our understanding of invalid voting, this study compares eight elections in Latin America that saw invalid voting dramatically rise in Argentina (1965), Ecuador (1984 and 2006), Brazil (1990), Colombia (1991), Peru (1995), Venezuela (2000), and Paraguay (2018). After reconstructing the main patterns proposed by the literature on the subject, this paper finds that the fragmentation or consolidation of the party system, controversial institutional reforms, and explicit calls for electoral boycotts are all prominent factors that can lead to the growth of invalid voting. It also shows that no single combination of factors can explain this collective protest behavior, with the cases offering different scenarios that can lead the electorate to choose this option, while invalid voting always seems to be associated with actual public protests. Last, compulsory voting laws, usually linked to protest ballots, are surprisingly absent from most of the cases as abstention appears to be a complementary behavior to invalid voting.