Objective:

To analyze the criticism voiced by a sector of Colombian liberalism to the electoral legislation produced by the coalition of the Partido Nacional during La Regeneración, which reduced democracy to the imposition of majorities.

Methodology:

The text is based on the examination of the different speeches, demonstrations, and publications of different partisan public figures. Among them stand out the constitutional project proposed by opposition liberals and drafted by Rafael Rocha Gutiérrez and Rafael Uribe Uribe's interventions.

Originality:

Colombian political historiography has not highlighted how liberal opponents of La Regeneración reacted to the imposition of an electoral system designed to prevent their party from gaining representation in public corporations or from regaining control of the Executive, nor how the government's neglect of their proposals to reform the law ended up confirming to the warmongering liberals that the way to regain power was to take up arms.

Conclusions:

Shortly after being instituted by a bipartisan coalition around the Partido Nacional, the electoral system of the 1886 Constitution demonstrated its exclusionary nature. This evidenced that the reading made by both the regenerador government and the opposition was mainly crossed by their need to guarantee their political representation and not by issues such as the expansion of the right to vote, since, in fact, the Liberals' proposal in relation to this point was based on the qualification of the voting citizen.