 Leopoldo Melo was born in Diamante, Entre Ríos Province, in 1869.He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires and earned a Law Degree, later becoming an important leader in the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR), the party chiefly responsible for the adoption of universal male suffrage in Argentina, in 1912.He was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies for Entre Ríos Province in 1914 and to the Argentine Senate in 1917.