Mexicans to vote in America
Thousands of Mexicans are getting ready to vote in the United States during the upcoming election.
Not in the congressional and gubernatorial election in California or nationwide, but for the next Mexican president.
Mexican overseas voting was approved several years ago and started with a low turnout. With years, Mexicans have shown an increasing interest in their country’s elections.
As of today, 467,566 voters had filed their applications to get their voting cards. Of those, only 57,106 voters had registered their voting card numbers in the Mexican election system, according to information released by the National Electoral Institute, or INE in Spanish.
However, interest in who should be the next Mexican president has climbed significantly. The institute reported 600,386 applications filed between Feb. 8 and 19. And, if I am not mistaken, the figure will grow as the March 31 deadline approaches.
Election officials said every single application is rigorously analyzed to make sure applicants comply with the requirements.
According to the institute, seven countries in the world contain more than 92 percent of foreign registered Mexican voters. As one could imagine, most of them live in the United States — 77.07 percent. Canada is a distant second place with 4.41 percent, Spain is third with 3 percent, Germany is fourth with 2.75 percent, France follows with 2.06 percent, the United Kingdom is next with 2.05 percent and last in the list is the Netherlands with 1.27 percent.
On an interesting side note, there are cities that contain single Mexican voters — Ankara, Turkey; Baku in Azerbaijan; Georgetown, Guyana; Hanoi, Vietnam; Kuwait and Nairobi, Kenya.
Voting abroad for the Mexican president is similar to what we know as absentee voting. Registered voters will receive their voting packages through the mail that includes a voter’s guide and ballot. The ballot is designed to prevent voter fraud. The package comes with a return envelope.
All these features have been included to prevent voter fraud after allegations of fraud came to light during the presidential elections of 1988 and 2006, when leftist candidates Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Manuel Andrés López Obrador questioned the election results, demanded recounts and denounced irregularities.
Lopez Obrador is running for president a third time.
According to January polls, the leader of the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, a word resembling the Virgin of Guadalupe, leads his closest rival of the conservative National Action Party, Ricardo Anaya, between 3 and 42 percentage points, with around a tenth of voters undecided.
Many Mexicans are tired of corruption, bloody violence and lack of economic opportunities, issues that had pushed López Obrador’s popularity, regardless of his controversial statements. American officials have expressed concern the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party might tamper with elections through vote buyouts and computer hacking, while some allegations had arisen of a Russian attempt to influence voters. The best counter-attack against these potential problems is voting. If interested, get in touch with the Mexican Consulate in Calexico to file for the voting card.