ABSTRACT
Electoral institutions have played a key role in the construction of Latin American democracies. By guaranteeing access of candidates to the media, equal distribution to candidates of free media time, reduction of campaigns’ duration, and regulation of opinion polls and electoral surveys – made possible by their reformist activism, electoral bodies have asserted their centrality in the region’s democracies. However, the emergence of digital platforms as a part of the electoral arena has changed this paradigm. Digital platforms have become actors in electoral litigation by deleting posts or even accounts on the grounds of the “violation of the platform’s terms of use”, rather than by referring to the jurisprudence used by the electoral bodies. As a result, electoral bodies have lost some of their centrality in the regulation of election campaigns, even though this is their raison d’être. In response, they have tried to use their normative instruments to overcome this challenge. Nevertheless, the mechanisms developed over the last 40 years seem ill-adapted to facing this issue. By analysing the Colombian, Peruvian, Mexican, and Brazilian cases in comparative perspective, this chapter aims to discuss this new reality.
