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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2006 
Few Expatriates to Vote in Mexico Election
 Laura Wides-Munoz - Associated Press
| | Many have criticized the expatriate voting process because Mexican law requires citizens to return to Mexico to register in person; many illegal immigrants in the U.S. were afraid they would not be able to get back into the country. |
When Mexican officials first considered whether to open the presidential election to those living abroad, they feared a flood of votes from the more than 10 million Mexicans in the United States might dictate the outcome.
But that huge voting bloc never materialized.
Only about 4.2 million Mexicans living abroad are registered in Mexico to vote, and of those, only 41,000 — or 1 percent — requested absentee ballots for next Sunday's election. How many of these will actually cast ballots remains to be seen.
Many have criticized the expatriate voting process because Mexican law requires citizens to return to Mexico to register in person; many illegal immigrants in the U.S. were afraid they would not be able to get back into the country. Others did not hear about the opportunity in time.
Despite that trickle, experts are calling this a significant start.
"You have to take into account how sensitive this was in Mexico. There is virtually no other country in the world that has so many citizens living abroad, and even a small percentage could affect the election," said Gabriel Escobar, associate director for the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center. "It is an incredibly remarkable thing that it happened. It didn't draw as many voters, but it's there."
Escobar noted that before President Vicente Fox and his National Action Party, or PAN, won the 2000 election, the Mexican government had a tense relationship with Mexicans living abroad, many of whom opposed the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. This time, the PRI's candidate is not even among the top two.
Left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party will face the PAN's Felipe Calderon. Expatriates in the United States seemed split between Lopez Obrador, who has promised to help the country's poor farmers, and Calderon, who experts say will probably push for a closer relationship with President Bush, which might help Mexicans in the United States.
The government's strict prohibition on candidates campaigning abroad, limited funding and regulations discouraging local consulates from promoting the vote meant getting the word out was no easy task.
That was true especially in the South, where the number of immigrants has nearly doubled in the past decade but where Mexican community groups and Spanish-language media — often the main source of information for these immigrants — still lag behind their counterparts in places like Los Angeles, Chicago and Phoenix.
When it came time to register, Florida City resident Araceli Rodriguez was at a loss for where to get information until her teenage son found the necessary forms on the Internet.
"I like to vote, so I looked for the information," said the housekeeper and mother of seven, who mailed in her ballot well before the July 1 deadline. "That is not the case with most people. They are thinking about work. They don't know where to go."
Many Mexicans across the country were said to be apathetic after growing up watching the PRI hold on to power decade after decade. And with proposed changes in immigration law before the U.S. Congress, many Mexicans were focused more on improving their situation in the U.S. than on politics back home.
But most of all, Mexicans who left before the mid-1990s were unlikely to possess the voter credentials needed to register and would have had to return to Mexico to get them.
That frustrated many community leaders, who said the complicated process was aimed at keeping expatriates from voting.
Eduardo Ruiz, president of the Los Angeles-based Federation de Aguas Calientes, organized weekly trips to Tijuana, Mexico, last year to help people apply for an electoral card. Ruiz, 34, a legal resident, said many illegal immigrants in the U.S. are afraid to cross back into Mexico.
"This has been a punishment for Mexicans here illegally," Ruiz said. "They can't vote here or there."
Associated Press writer Andrew Glazer in Los Angeles contributed to this story. |
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