Mexico City, Mexico – Senators from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have called for a reform of the "federal electoral procedures code," to protect the personal information of registered voters.

Unlike many other countries, such as Colombia, where voter ID cards contain no personal information that can be used by criminals, Mexico’s voter IDs include clearly visible addresses, putting Mexico’s 84.5 million registered voters at risk of identity theft, extortion, and kidnapping

According to the Citizen Liaison Center run by the federal police, over 50,000 cases of extortion occur each year that involve the use of personal information taken from stolen voter ID cards, while the Citizen Institute for Crime Studies reports that six out of ten kidnappers use information taken from voter IDs to threaten their victims.

This week, the Federal Electoral Institute will discuss a new design for voter IDs, leading to calls by the PRI and the National Action Party for the new design to encrypt all sensitive personal information.

The proposed reform was drafted by former PRI senator Arturo Zamora Jiménez last September, but has languished in committee since then, despite calls by the Supreme Court to implement the reform.

"This is an important wake-up call for the Senate committees in charge of analyzing these subjects and implementing reforms. We’re letting the judicial branch do our work for us," PRI Senator María Verónica Martínez Espinoza said.