The Forum Search found my own post. The initial aim was to restrict Resident voting to local and municipal elections only. That didn’t fly for legal reasons, so later on they faffed about with the idea of eliminating the penalty for non compliance.
That would have virtually transformed the Resident vote into a voluntary one, but that parliamentary initiative seems to have fizzled out as well. Anyhow it was too little, too late to save them.
The Resident sentiment is clearly anti-leftwing so the idea was to discourage them from voting by removing the fine. That’s the cheap mentality of (some) Chilean politicians.