A few days ago, President López Obrador spoke about voting from abroad. Basically it was pronounced so that it can be exercised in a simpler way, “… without so many bureaucratic obstacles, that effective, modern mechanisms are sought to vote online …”
The announcement was made within the framework of the recently approved Federal Law for the Revocation of Mandate; He even mentioned that he would ask the Secretary of Foreign Relations to initiate a campaign so that Mexicans can participate from abroad in democratic processes, including the revocation of their mandate.
The president’s position is surprising because the issue of extraterritorial voting is not an object of interest on his agenda, nor on that of other political forces, as it has been for academics and migrant movements and organizations.
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This contrasts with the intrinsic importance of the recognition of the right to participation and political representation of Mexicans and Mexicans leaving the country. It is not excessive to say that political rights have had three major milestones in the recent history of Mexico: the vote of women in 1953; the possibility that those over 18 years of age voted, in 1969; and the vote of Mexicans abroad, in 1996 and regulated until 2005.
The trend in favor of expanding the political rights of Mexicans, although progressive, is limited by the distrust of the actors regarding democracy as the way to channel the conflict and also by political competition. In this framework of things, the extraterritorial vote has not been the exception.
From the first experience of voting from abroad by the then IFE, in 2006, some of the most critical aspects on which the debate repeatedly focuses when talking about this issue were exposed, such as organization costs, number of votes received from abroad and the procedure to guarantee the secrecy and uniqueness of each vote cast outside the national territory.
It highlights that after 16 years of having been regulated this right in the Electoral Code, the message of the head of the Executive focuses on how to facilitate the casting of the vote from abroad. Such an aspect is not new, but it emerged from its first federal experience, and it is enlivened after each federal or state electoral process in which this form of suffrage is present.
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In this regard, important progress has been made to make the exercise of this citizen right easier and easier. In 2014, with the latest electoral reform, substantial changes were introduced regarding voting from abroad: electronic voting was incorporated in addition to the postal route to be able to vote outside of Mexico; the door was opened so that nationals could process their voting credentials at Mexican embassies or consulates abroad; and the number of popularly elected positions that can be voted outside the national territory was expanded. Despite these advances in the regulatory sphere, the 2018 election confirms that the “success” of voting from abroad should not be based on the number of votes received but on the conditions in which it is exercised from abroad.
Even with all the political effervescence of 2018, the number of votes received from abroad reached just 98 thousand votes, of which 65% were in favor of the then candidate López Obrador. Three years after the next presidential election in Mexico, it will be interesting to see Chancellor Ebrard as a promoter of this vote, although it seems that other factors will continue to influence fellow citizens more, such as fears related to providing their data to the electoral authorities, including their domicile, as well as an interest in influencing national politics.
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Master in Public Policy from the University of Oxford and Bachelor of Political Science and International Relations from the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE).
Twitter: @palmiratapia
The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of their authors and are completely independent of the position and editorial line of Forbes Mexico.