CABA adopts PASO in electoral system

Buenos Aires City did not newly adopt PASO in 2025; it suspended them. The city’s Legislature voted on February 21, 2025 to pause the primary system for that year’s local election. (legislatura.gob.ar) (buenosaires.gob.ar) PASO — short for Primarias Abiertas, Simultáneas y Obligatorias — was already part of the city’s electoral code. Buenos Aires incorporated that framework when it passed Law 6,031 and its electoral code in October 2018. (buenosaires.gob.ar) (boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar) That matters because the premise of the story is backward. In late 2024, Jorge Macri’s government had formally called PASO for April 27, 2025 and a general election for July 6, 2025 under the existing code. (boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar) (ligadelconsorcista.org) The city then changed course in February. Law 6,807 suspended the PASO regime only for the 2025 electoral process, rather than repealing the primary system from the code altogether. (buenosaires.gob.ar) (boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar) The vote was lopsided: 55 lawmakers backed the suspension, three from the Left opposed it, and one lawmaker abstained. Clara Muzzio, the city’s vice mayor and head of the Legislature, said the change would save 20 billion pesos. (legislatura.gob.ar) After the law passed, the city advanced with a single legislative contest instead of a primary-plus-general sequence. Official election documents refer to the general election held on May 18, 2025 for 30 seats in the Buenos Aires City Legislature. (boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar) In practice, suspending PASO changed who decided candidacies. Instead of voters narrowing party fields in an open primary, alliances and party leaders assembled their lists internally before the May vote. (buenosaires.gob.ar) (boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar) CABA had used PASO before. A 2019 Legislature explainer described city primaries for head of government, legislators and commune boards held alongside the national PASO that year. (legislatura.gob.ar) So the cleaner explainer is this: Buenos Aires City entered 2025 with PASO on the books, scheduled them, and then froze them for one election cycle. The system survives in the code, but it was not the mechanism used to choose local candidates in 2025. (buenosaires.gob.ar 1) (buenosaires.gob.ar 2)