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 News from Around the Americas | November 2005 
Voting from Abroad Gaining Little Interest
 Wire services
| | While electoral officials are spending US130 million to enable Mexican migrants to vote in next year's contest, few seem to be interested. |
Only 733 Mexicans living abroad have applied to vote during the first month of registration for the country's 2006 presidential election, officials said Monday, prompting the opening of election offices Tuesday in Tijuana and soon in other border cities to draw more expatriate interest.
Mexican authorities estimate as many as 4.2 million people living outside the country, mostly in the United States, are eligible to vote by mail in the July election. Congress approved the absentee vote on June 30 after a years-long debate.
But with no money to advertise the new voting rights, and a ban on presidential campaigning outside Mexico, some worry that after years of fighting for the vote, many ex-patriots won't bother.
The Federal Electoral Institute, known as IFE, has a budget of about US130 million to administer the country's first vote abroad, with slightly more than half earmarked for postage costs.
Only citizens with voting cards issued by IFE may request absentee ballots. Getting a voting card usually requires residents to apply in their Mexican hometown, with a birth certificate, passport or consular-issued ID card. Then there is a wait as long as a month for the application to be processed and the card issued.
About 80,000 ex-pat absentee voter forms have been requested since Oct. 1, when registration began, Mexican voting officials said.
But with the completed applications just a fraction of that number, the election institute is trying to streamline the system by opening offices in border cities, where any Mexican citizen with proper identification can apply.
Electoral offices also are staffing up for Mexicans heading home in December for the holidays. "If people apply for their voting card when they first get here," Ballados said, "we're going to try to get them a card within two weeks."
About 37 million Mexicans voted in the 2000 presidential election that ended the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party ends his six-year term in December 2006. The Mexican The current presidential frontrunner, according to polls, is former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party. He faces National Action Party candidate Felipe Calderón, a former energy secretary under Fox. PRI contender Roberto Madrazo is expected to win his party's Nov. 13 primary.
Absentee voter forms must be returned by registered mail by Jan. 15, along with photocopies of the IFE voter card and a utility bill showing a home address.
More than 10 million adult Mexicans, about 10 percent of the total population, are believed to be living in the United States.
Carlos Martínez of the Times' Mexico City bureau contributed to this report. |
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