Mexican Voting May Extend Into U.S.

By Chris Kraul and Sam Quinones

June 29, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Congress approved landmark legislation Tuesday giving citizens outside the country the right to vote by mail in presidential elections, a measure expected to have a significant effect on next year’s contest.

The overwhelming 455-6 vote to initiate balloting-by-mail capped a years-long internal debate. Skeptics fear that ballots sent through the mail might be stolen, manipulated or, given Mexico’s unreliable mail service, never arrive. Some politicians worried that opposing parties would somehow benefit.

In the end, the Congress bowed to enormous grass-roots pressure, much of it from immigrant groups in the United States demanding the franchise. The bill now goes to President Vicente Fox, who is expected to sign it.

Salvador Garcia, president of the Council of Mexican Federations in Los Angeles, said having the vote would make immigrants “feel more a part of Mexico.”

Although no one has exact figures, as many as 10 million Mexican citizens live in the United States, about half of them believed to be legal immigrants, many of whom hold dual citizenship, and about half illegal immigrants. As many as 4 million of these immigrants, both legal and illegal, may be eligible to vote next year, according to estimates by the Mexican Senate.

“We’ve put so much work into this,” said Garcia, who immigrated from Jalisco state in 1983 and now owns a demolition company in Norwalk. “There’ve been many late nights, many trips, many frustrations. All the politicians who came here made many promises and then would do nothing. Finally, someone took this seriously.”

Diana Hull, president of Californians for Population Stabilization, expressed concern about the legislation.

“I think it’s all part of erasing the borders in North America,” said Hull, a proponent of stricter immigration laws. “I’m opposed to the intrusion of the Mexican government into the United States. I don’t want illegal immigrants here to have that vote. They shouldn’t even be here.”

The law’s passage, which came during a special session of Congress, calls for the Federal Electoral Institute to mail ballots to all registered Mexican voters living abroad who request them through consular offices and over the Internet and to count the ones mailed back to Mexico. The balloting-by-mail is modeled after the U.S. absentee system.

The decision marked a historic turning point for the Mexican government. For many years, government officials termed as traitors those Mexicans who left to work in the United States. But in the last decade, immigrants in the U.S. have sent back money to fund hundreds of public-works projects in their home villages. The donations have often been matched by Mexico’s federal, state and local governments.

Financial clout has brought a stronger political voice.

That leverage is what brought about Tuesday’s vote, said Efrain Jimenez, project director for the Federation of Zacatecan Clubs of Southern California, and a long-time immigrant activist.

“If the Congress wouldn’t have approved this, the immigrants would have made them pay a huge price,” said Jimenez, who emigrated to the United States from Zacatecas state in 1991. “It says that immigrants can change things if we come together.”

Also jubilant was Raul Ross Pineda, an immigrant and member of the Chicago-based Political Rights Commission for Mexicans Living Abroad. He came to Mexico to lobby the Congress for the bill’s passage.

“Now we are complete citizens,” he said. “Before we seemed only half.”

In contrast, Barbara Coe, chairwoman of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, said she was opposed to the concept of dual citizenship.

“You cannot have loyalty to two different countries,” she said.

In the unlikely event that all those eligible were to vote, they would increase by 11% 37.6 million ballots cast in Mexico’s 2000 presidential election.

In a statement from Belize where he is visiting, Fox said the law was a “historic deed” and that he has supported such legislation since he entered politics.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said that the additional voters enfranchised by the new law, which he estimated at 3 million to 8 million, would “make the fundamental difference” in next year’s election, a sentiment echoed by various political analysts.

Some immigrant vote advocates had reservations.

Eligibility for the absentee ballots is limited to Mexican citizens who have electoral credentials that have been issued by the Mexican election institute since 1992 as a requirement to vote in any federal contest. The credentials are part of a series of reforms that have transformed Mexico’s federal electoral system into a worldwide model.

Thus, many Mexicans who emigrated to the United States before the credentials came into use may not be eligible unless they return home to apply for them. That provision and the fact that immigrants will be unable to register from abroad disappointed some voter advocacy groups.

“What the Mexican Congress did was send the wrong message to millions of Mexicans abroad by excluding at least 70% of them from the right to vote,” said Al Rojas of Sacramento, a leader in the absentee vote movement. Rojas was born in the United States, but his parents emigrated from Michoacan state in 1933. Rojas would be eligible to vote because the first-born children of immigrants have a right to Mexican citizenship.

Alberto Szekely, a public interest attorney in Mexico City and advocate for immigrant voting rights, said he was disappointed that the law went only “half way.” He said Mexico should permit overseas voter registration as well as voting at consulates and embassies.

“The requirement of the credential to get the absentee ballot will eliminate the possibility for millions of Mexicans to vote,” Szekely said.

Another source of worry among immigrant voting advocates is how the estimated $130-million cost of the ballot-by-mail process will be financed. The plan has not been completed and some fear that immigrants might have to shoulder some of the expense.

Ruth Trinidad Hernandez Martinez, a National Action Party federal deputy from Tijuana, said the financing details still have to be ironed out. She said there is a possibility that Mexicans abroad might have to share some of the cost.

“This vote is just the first step in a series of tasks in ensuring that all Mexicans have the right to approve their leaders, which is the most important aspect,” Hernandez Martinez said.

Leo Zuckermann, a political scientist at the Center for Economic Teaching and Research here, said he was afraid that the Mexican postal system, with a reputation for corruption and inefficiency, may not be up to the task of processing and safeguarding hundreds of thousands of ballots. “I hope to be proven wrong and that nothing happens,” he said.

The legislation allows for absentee balloting only in presidential elections, starting with next year’s.

The law passed just in time to make the voting legally and logistically feasible for the July 2006 contest. With time running out, the lower house of Mexico’s Congress approved a Senate version that was passed earlier.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was said to be holding out for a system that would include voting booths in foreign countries, but agreed in committee Tuesday to support the Senate version.

Uncertain is which candidate or party will be favored by expatriates. Likely candidates include Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party who is mayor of Mexico City. Roberto Madrazo is the front-runner for the PRI nomination and Santiago Creel, who recently resigned as interior minister, is favored to win the nomination for Fox’s National Action Party.

Fox is thought to have done extremely well in garnering votes from immigrants who traveled back to Mexico, many of them in caravans, in July 2000 to cast ballots for the reformist candidate whose victory ended a seven-decade-long PRI grip on presidential power.

The PRI was thought to oppose absentee balloting, fearing some sort of immigrant backlash against the party that ruled the country until Fox swept to power. But at this point expatriate voter preferences are a “complete unknown,” said Pamela Starr, a political scientist and author in Washington who follows Mexican politics.

“That’s one of the reasons that parties have been hesitant to approve it because no one knows who will vote and therefore which party gains an advantage.”

Kraul reported from Mexico City, Quinones from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Eric Malnic in Los Angeles and researchers Cecilia Sanchez and Narayani Lasala in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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Voting procedure

Of the estimated 10 million Mexican citizens residing in the United States, as many as 4 million are believed by the Mexican Congress to be registered voters in their homeland. Only those who can show proof of registration will be eligible to vote by mail in next year’s presidential election.

How Mexican immigrants will file their absentee ballots

Mexicans abroad will have to download a ballot request form from the Federal Electoral Institute’s website, www.ife.org.mx, or obtain one at a Mexican consulate or embassy from Oct. 1 through Jan. 15, 2006.

With their request, voters must include:

* Photocopies of their voter registration cards, which are called electoral credentials.

* A possible fee to be determined later. Some immigrant groups have been told it could be as much as $18 per voter to cover registration and certified mail costs.

Once the institute receives the request, it will send a ballot via certified mail with an addressed envelope and instructions on how to file the ballot.

* Ballots must be sent by certified mail to the address on the envelope.

* Dates for mailing the ballots have not yet been set.

* Ballots will be counted on July 2, 2006, the day of the presidential election.

Source: Times staff

Los Angeles Times