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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2006 
Mexico's Absentee Voter Drive Flops
 S. Lynne Walker - Copley News Service
| | Zazil Veronica Godinez Carrillo (left), 6, played with sister Angelica Zitlalli (right), 7, as their parents waited to register to vote yesterday in a Tijuana plaza. (Earnie Grafton/Union-Tribune) |
Mexico City – Mexico's historic decision to give citizens living abroad the right to vote by mail in the July presidential election has drawn so little interest that critics are calling the effort a costly failure.
With the deadline set for midnight tonight, only 18,600 Mexicans living abroad have registered to vote, according to Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.
When Mexico's Congress approved the landmark legislation last year, supporters predicted a turnout of 400,000 voters – about 10 percent of eligible voters living in the United States.
IFE officials insist that the first effort to register Mexicans abroad has been a limited success, noting the agency has received registration cards from citizens living in 64 countries. Mexicans in 22 U.S. states have registered to vote. Some cards are from as far away as Alaska, with almost half coming from California.
But a complex registration process, lack of information about sign-up requirements and a ban on U.S. campaigns by presidential candidates have dampened enthusiasm for voting by absentee ballot in the hotly contested election that pits leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador against former energy minister Felipe Calderón and political hard-liner Roberto Madrazo.
Many of those who filled out the registration cards made so many mistakes that one IFE official said 20 percent had to be voided.
"There has not been any way to educate people about this," said Gustavo Munguia, a tax preparer who heads a Vista organization called Hispanos Unidos en USA.
Since registration began in October, Munguia has been helping Mexicans sign up to vote. He registered them in his office and set up a registration station at a Vista elementary school. Last weekend, Hispanos Unidos held a voter registration fair.
Munguia figures he has helped register almost 400 people. Still, he is disappointed with his results. "I expected more participants," he said.
The IFE spent almost $12 million promoting the absentee vote, even hiring Los Tigres del Norte, a popular norteno band, to tape TV spots urging Mexicans to register. The staggering amount of money spent to register so few voters has drawn criticism from commentators and academics.
"They are giving priority to the vote," said researcher Rodolfo Cruz of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. "But you also have to help the population with other issues, like protecting the rights of Mexicans in the U.S."
Mexico's voter registration drive looked more like a grass-roots effort than an organized government program, with volunteer groups across the United States setting up tables at food markets, churches and malls.
In Chicago, one group registered more than 500 people last week outside the Mexican consulate. In Atlanta, volunteers registered 220 people last weekend at Plaza Fiesta, a shopping center popular with Latinos.
In Fresno, a group representing indigenous farm workers registered scores of Mexicans over the past two weeks at Latino markets, churches and stores. "There is interest, but there were a lot of flaws," said Rufino Dominguez, who heads the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales.
The IFE must be more responsible about disseminating information, he said.
Just two weeks before the deadline, Dominguez said he received 10 boxes of fliers and posters promoting the absentee vote. "It came too late," he said. "That is money thrown in the garbage."
If experience is the best teacher, "We all learned a great lesson," said Primitivo Rodríguez, an adviser to IFE who had lobbied for the absentee vote for almost 20 years. "If we give people the right to vote, then we need to give them a reason to vote. We need profound reforms to make the process friendly and accessible."
The obstacles were painfully clear to Rodriguez when he traveled to Atlanta last weekend to help register voters.
The registration form was so complicated and so hard to read that Rodríguez made a mistake on one out of every seven that he helped voters complete. Then, when he went to the post office to send the registration cards by registered mail – a legal requirement of the absentee vote – he had to wait in a long line, fill out a postal form, pay $8 per registration card and speak to two clerks in English.
"This is the most difficult vote in the world," Rodríguez said. "If the conditions were the same in Mexico, we would have only three votes cast – by Madrazo, López Obrador and Calderón."
Heliodoro Díaz, who presides over Mexico's lower house of Congress, acknowledged that the law "can be perfected."
"We have to analyze, together with the IFE, a way to generate a greater participation. But I don't see it as a failure," he said. "The right to vote is there for all Mexicans. From that point of view, it is a success."
Mexico's Vote-Signup Deadline Strikes
Leslie Berestein - Union-Tribune
Tijuana – Mexican citizens who waited until the last minute to register to vote in this year's presidential election spent yesterday morning lined up for hours shivering outside a shopping center in the blustery weather.
Many were locals, but as many as one-third came from the United States, some from as far as Los Angeles and Palmdale to stand outside the federal voter registration site in the Centro Comercial Otay.
Wrapped in a woolly shawl, Angelina Aguilar Cervantes of Riverside said she and her husband left home about 3 a.m. to queue up by 5 a.m.
"This is my first time voting since I've lived there, but I'm almost regretting having come," said Aguilar, 50, still in line at noon. "First we have to line up here, then we have to wait in line to go back home."
This is the first year Mexican citizens living abroad may vote by absentee ballot, but that didn't eliminate the need for many to travel to Mexico in order to meet voter deadlines.
Yesterday was the last day for Mexican citizens to register for the voter credentials they will need for July's national election. While those voting by mail must have registered for credentials by Dec. 31, those who registered between then and yesterday must cast ballots in Mexico.
For those who already have credentials and wish to vote by mail, yesterday was the last day to send completed applications for absentee ballots to the Federal Elections Institute, or IFE, in Mexico City.
The turnout for hopeful absentee voters has fallen far short of expectations. Although it is estimated that there are 4 million Mexicans in the United States who are eligible to vote in Mexico, as of Friday afternoon, IFE representatives in Mexico City were reporting that only 17,000 completed applications had been received from Mexican expatriates worldwide. Upward of 10,000 came from the United States.
The Mexican Consulate in San Diego was open over the weekend for those who wanted to pick up absentee ballot applications at the last minute. People who could not get them postmarked in the United States on Saturday were encouraged to drop them off at one of two voter registration sites in Tijuana yesterday, or at a location on the southbound side of the San Ysidro port of entry, to get them postmarked by the Mexican mail service.
Some experts fear that in spite of the last-minute rush, absentee ballot applicants will remain far fewer than expected. UCSD's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies calculated before Mexico's 2000 national election that there were between 125,000 and 360,000 likely Mexican voters in the United States who had valid voter credentials.
"It's unfortunate, because people who were against the absentee ballot in the first place will use this to say there isn't an adequate constituency for it in the immigrant community," Wayne Cornelius, director of the center, said Friday. "They will use this as an argument for not improving the process to make it more user-friendly."
Cornelius and other experts have blamed the low turnout on a difficult process for registering to vote by mail, along with poor publicity and other problems.
Applications for absentee ballots were available at Mexican government offices in the United States and online, putting those without transportation or a computer at a disadvantage. They also had to be sent to Mexico City by costly registered mail.
In addition, those who wished to apply for an absentee ballot needed to already have valid voter credentials, and these are obtainable only in Mexico.
"I applied for mine a month ago," said Flora Garcia, 34, a Murrieta resident who was picking up her credentials yesterday, her absentee ballot application in hand.
Garcia said she had obtained the application early on, but had to travel to Tijuana anyway to register for her credentials. |
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